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International Development
Youth Internships
CBA Young Professionals International Program                                 

Program Update

The CBA 2008-2009 Program






 

The CBA 2008-2009 Program 
   
Opportunities for young lawyers – Helping build human rights law abroad

The CBA is administering a Young Professionals International Internship Program, which is funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) as part of the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy (YES). Through this program, young lawyers are placed in eight-month internships (they are overseas for between six and seven of the eight months) to work with human rights legal organizations on issues such as women's rights, labour rights, constitutional rights, children's rights and indigenous people's rights, in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern and Central Africa and South East Asia.  There is a possibility for personally-funded placements to slot into this program (see at the end of this page.)

The program is designed to achieve two objectives:

  • Firstly, it provides human rights legal organizations abroad with young lawyers who have the expertise to make a professional contribution to their work.
  • Secondly, it gives young lawyers, at the threshold of their careers, international experience to help them obtain employment in the field of law and international human rights legal work.

Eligibility guidelines 

Eligibility guidelines, as set down by CIDA, are that applicants should be qualified lawyers at or below the age of 30. Preference is generally given to those who have done their articling. They must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents, who are unemployed or under-employed, and who have not had previous career-related, paid employment overseas. Please note that you may not apply if you have previously participated in an internship under the Canadian government's Youth Employment Strategy (YES Program), of which this program is a part. Nor may you be enrolled in a full-time educational program.

The overseas organizations are human rights legal organizations working to protect and promote human rights in their countries through the law and legal development. Most of them are in Latin America and the Caribbean, Southern and Central Africa and South East Asia..

Closing date

The closing date for applications for the program 2008-2009 will be Tuesday, April 8, 2008.

How to apply

Write a letter of application, describing your interest and attaching your resumé. There is no application form. You should say how you believe you could make a contribution to a human rights legal Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) overseas, and detail your experience, both voluntary and professional, in legal human rights-type activities. Such activities could include working in a legal aid clinic or a rape crisis center, being an active member of Amnesty International or human rights advocacy group, or working for a trade union or in women's, children's, Aboriginal or labour organizations.

To ensure that your application is considered, please read these instructions carefully:

Send your application in two e-mail attachments in Word or WordPerfect format. No Adobe/pdf files please. The first attachment is your cover letter, and the second attachment is your resumé. Please pay attention to the file names of the two attachments. If your name is J.Smith, the file name of your cover letter should be " SmithJ.let ", and the file name of your resumé should be " SmithJ.cv ". We get a large number of applications and this will enable us to file your application so that it does not get lost.

Please do NOT send both cover letter and resume as a single document, and do NOT use the body of the e-mail as the cover letter. It will not be considered.

The subject line of the e-mail should be: " SmithJ, YPI application ". Then e-mail your application to the CBA YPI Program Director Al Cook at alc@cba.org

Please apply after January 1, 2008.

The placements and language requirements

The placements in the Americas are Spanish or English-speaking and those in S.E. Asia are generally bilingual French/English.

Please note that language requirements are exacting. These are not opportunities for learning a language. There is no finer recipe for an unhappy and unsuccessful placement than the inability to properly understand what is going on around you and/or to make yourself understood precisely and immediately.   If you are applying for a Spanish-speaking placement, please confirm that your Spanish is on a level that will enable you to work on legal documents in Spanish and converse freely with your Spanish-speaking colleagues.  You will be tested informally as part of the interview process.
 
Your time abroad

Please note that due to the new requirements of CIDA the timing of the program has been brought forward a month.  Instead of leaving for their placements in September, interns will be required to be at their placements by August 1st, 2008.

The full term of the internship is seven and a half months (July 1st, 2008 - February 15th, 2009), which allows for a month of preparation, and a short period of follow-up and consolidation in Canada upon your return. You are required to produce a minimum of six months (24 weeks) of work for your host organization, and you have a holiday of two weeks, normally while your host office is closed for the holiday season. Your total time abroad at your placement is six and a half to seven months. (This may be extended under special conditions -- notably if your host organization is willing to pay for your continued contribution to its work -- and some of our interns have found ongoing project work either with our partner organization itself or with another organization in the country of placement.)

Your approach to the placements

Please note that these placements are not for the faint of heart. Nor are they for those seeking unfocused "overseas experience", rather than intending to do hard professional work; nor will you be regarded as doing anybody any favours. On the contrary, the internships are the kind where you throw yourself heart, body and soul into the work and life of your organization. The rewards are concomitantly high, but you must be prepared to meet challenges, many of an unglamorous and even disheartening kind; to be comparatively low on your host organization's agenda (you are only an intern!); and to be entrepreneurial in terms of your work: in other words, you may not only have to take the ball and run with it, you may well have to make the ball first. On the other hand, you will have plenty of back-up support, including ongoing advice from your predecessor(s) and contact with other interns -- and your host organization will certainly appreciate your dedication, professionalism and initiative, as well as your team spirit and sense of humour.

The internship is yours, in the sense that you must use your own initiative and creativity in developing your project and making the most of your placement; and it is your host organization's, in the sense that your work, activities and behaviour must be directed to furthering the aims of the organization, enhancing its image, accepting its employment conditions as one of a team, and of course making a solid contribution to its work.

Don't place your expectations too high. You will not change the world. But you will make a difference. You will not achieve everything. But you will achieve something.

N.B. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ASPECTS OF THIS PROGRAM ARE BASED ON THE EXERCISE OF THE INTERN'S INITIATIVE! THIS INCLUDES SUCH LOGISTICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS AND PROCEDURES AS APPLYING FOR VISAS, BOOKING AIR TICKETS, APPLYING FOR DEFERMENTS OF STUDENT LOAN REPAYMENTS, FINDING ACCOMMODATION - EVERYTHING! The CBA and your host organization overseas will give you all the backup and support you need, but the initiative is at all time YOURS!

Interviews, preparations, briefings, reporting and follow-up activities

Interviews will be held in mid-May by telephone conference call. The final selection of applicants is made subsequently and then the interns are put in touch with their overseas host supervisors to begin developing their projects, and applying for necessary visas and other requirements. The idea is to complete all the necessary formalities, and do the preliminary research and work necessary to enable the intern to "hit the ground running" on arrival at the placement. Interns must develop a work plan, which must be agreed by the placement supervisor and by the CBA's YPI program director, before the intern leaves.

A mandatory orientation/briefing session will be held in Canada at a time and venue to be announced.  It will be before you leave for your placement and may be before the program commences on July 1st.  Fares to this session are paid by the program. Interns are then required to arrange their visas and other travel requirements and procedures. Costs for all these (but not for passports) are covered by the program. Interns leave for their placements at the beginning of August, and return in February, to participate in a mandatory debriefing in Ottawa on Tuesday and Wednesday February 17th and 18th 2009. At this debriefing (again, travel and other costs are paid for by the program), interns are given advice and assistance to help them in seeking jobs. Interns may also be asked, on return, to give presentations at CBA meetings and perhaps other relevant functions, to advise on the following year's program, and to help promote the program. They are asked to produce articles for CBA's website and publications, and for other relevant publications. They are asked to take photographs while at their placements, for CBA to use in its materials, and to publicize the placement and its work, through their Bar bulletins, Law School Alumni magazines and other appropriate media. Please note that the program sponsor, CIDA, require these follow-up advocacy activities.

Reporting

Interns are required to do an interim and a final report.  The reports are sent to the CBA program coordinator, the interim report early in the internship, with the final report being due on March 10th 2009 at the latest.  You will be given more information on the reporting requirements on acceptance to the program.

Financing and holidays

Interns have their fares paid to and from their placements, and receive a monthly stipend for the duration of the program, as well as an accommodation allowance for the time they are away. These are sufficient for the upkeep of the interns, and also enable them to have a holiday while they are in their host country. Interns have two weeks' holiday over the holiday period when their placement offices are closed.

The overseas organizations

Organizations where interns may be placed include:

Project undertaken within the Government of Canada's Youth Employment Strategy, with contributions of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Program approval is conditional upon the signature of a contribution agreement by CIDA.

PERSONALLY-FUNDED PLACEMENTS:

The CBA accepts personally-funded placements - i.e., applications from interns prepared to raise their own funding to replace that of CIDA.  However the applicant must conform to some of the same program criteria as CIDA-funded interns (but not all - see below), i.e. he or she must be a qualified young lawyer who has done articles etc.(see “Eligibility Guidelines” set out above).  Such applicants must also be interviewed by the CBA’s interviewing panel and go through the same selection process as CIDA interns - this process is aimed at assessing the suitability of an applicant to go on one of these internships.   Certain of CIDA’s criteria would not apply, such as the one precluding applications from those who have been on YES internships previously.  While the program is still being aimed at “young” lawyers in the first place, the applicants would also not be subject to the 30 year age limit required by CIDA.

Please apply according to the same procedures set out above.  If you have any questions or would like to discuss the possibility of a personally-funded placement, please contact Al Cook at alc@cba.org.    


 

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