November 4 2011

NMIT Celebrates 14 years of bringing German Students to Nelson Businesses

Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and a group of German universities, called Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg (DHBW) are marking the 14th year of bringing human resource benefits to Nelson businesses.

Each year since 1997, NMIT assists around 20 interns from the eight universities run by DHBW in the Baden-Württemberg region find a short unpaid internship to give them experience of New Zealand businesses, while they complete their degrees.

The students come for a three-month internship across a range of local businesses and NMIT Director of Marketing and Student Management Systems Sandra Williams says the reason it has worked so well is because the students add value.

“Employers who’ve taken an intern from DHBW report back that it’s been a great experience for them and their organisation. They really do bring great skills and a different perspective into a workplace, which can be invaluable. The students and the employers are both getting a lot out of this relationship.”

Sandra says the students are all on three year degree programmes that alternate academic study with workplace training, with the option to do some training overseas.

Currently there are eight interns from Germany working in the Nelson Region that NMIT has placed, working in finance, marketing, IT and general business administration positions.

One of those is Sabrina Mangold who is completing a degree in Business Administration – specialising in marketing. She is working at the Brook Waimarama Sanctuary doing a mix of business administration and marketing tasks for upcoming events such as their stand at the A&P show in November.

“As part of my training I have worked for a large German savings bank which had a lot of marketing budget and was promoting their brand, so to be here now and able to work for a small non-profit nature organisation is a great experience. I love that I’m in a totally different work environment.”

Sabrina also has loved working so close to nature and she feels she’s helping a worthwhile cause.

Brook Waimarama Sanctuary Project Co-ordinator, Rick Field says they rely on volunteers for most of what they do, so having the interns provide on-going professional skills to get the job done is invaluable.

“Our core aim is the raising of $4.5 million dollars for the pest proof fence, and maintaining an operating budget to enable us to carry out restoration of an ecosystem. We have over 260 volunteers who need plenty of supervision and have a membership of over 600 who pay a yearly subscription. This all adds to a large amount of administrative work, and Sabrina is brilliant at helping us collate information from the field as well as work on our supporter database.”

“Her marketing skills are already coming into play with poster design and she’ll be helping us with events in the next month,” says Rick Field.

He says they have had a number of the German interns through NMIT and he is extremely grateful.

“From our experience, their level of professionalism, ability to complete tasks unsupervised, with minimal input and to get accurate output has been very useful to get our administration done. And we hope we give something back to the interns as well.”

As part of the long-standing partnership, NMIT business students also have opportunity to study abroad at DHBW in Germany.

Photo Caption: German intern Sabrina Mangold shows her work to Brook Waimarama Sanctuary Project Co-ordinator Rick Field.

More Information on the Brook Waimarma Sanctuary their website is: www.brooksanctuary.org

ENDS

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