KINGSTON, Jamaica — The Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) says it is will be contracting university students and/or recent graduates with backgrounds in areas such as business and social media management under an internship programme expected to expand its member services to affiliates.

The move is a key deliverable, according to the JOA’s secretary general/CEO, Ryan Foster, pointing to its base within the organisations’ “Pathway to Success” mantra. The programme is expected to be fully implemented in September.

“We recently launched a first of its kind JOA Scholarship Programme, which was only one of the many tasks we have set out to achieve within our “Pathway to Success” campaign,” Foster said.

“Another initiative that we have embarked upon now is our JOA Internship Programme. The programme is centred around assisting our member associations in certain key deliverables as articulated within our member quarterly meeting and more recently our Advanced Sports Management Programme,” he continued.

During a meeting, affiliates of the JOA noted a lack of resource skillsets in specific areas, namely the preparation of business and strategic plans, social media management, securing corporate sponsorship and administrative duties. As a consequence, the JOA said it drafted this plan to grow their business capabilities.

The interns will be drawn from universities and colleges, and will have a background in marketing, business administration and management.

“We will give four interns the task to work with selected member associations based on need to assist them in the development of their strategic plans, marketing plans and budgets,” Foster explained.

“The interns and member associations will work along with our JOA management team, spearheaded by Ms Novelette Harris, our member relations manager,” he added. “At the end of the programme each member would have developed the highlighted deliverables and at which point they will go back and implement within their respective associations. Ms Harris will be responsible to follow-up after implementation to ensure that the plans are active and successful.”

Foster said the internship programme is another way of extending services to members and is also an avenue to develop members’ business profile and assist in monetising value.

“The internship programme will be ongoing and after the first phase in August, we will have another batch of interns and member associations throughout the year,” he said.