Cambridge: Four students flew out to India this week as the first Cambridge participants in an international student internship programme launched last January by India's largest business conglomerate, Tata Group.

The University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, signed MOUs with the Tata Group in January this year to take part in the Tata International Social Entrepreneurship Scheme (TISES).

The primary objective of TISES is to provide international students with a chance to work in community initiative projects of the Tata Group and therefore promote international understanding.

TISES offers summer internships annually to final year undergraduates and graduates for up to eight weeks.

The four Cambridge students, selected out of a number of applicants, are now settling in their respective areas of work in community projects sponsored by Tata Chemicals, after a two-day induction programme in Mumbai.

They are Valerie Fitton Kane, a student at Judge Business School, Lee Nordstrum, an MPhil student in Education, Grant Jackson, who recently completed his first degree in Natural Sciences and Selene Gittings, who has just finished her undergraduate degree in the faculty of Social and Political Sciences.

Helen Haugh of Judge Business School who coordinates the TISES programme at Cambridge went on a fact-finding trip to India in March.

She said, "This is an excellent opportunity for students to gain real understanding of the impact of social entrepreneurship on the lives of people in developing countries. The pioneering work of the Tata Group shows how corporations can engage with communities and lead innovative change at grass roots level."

Of the four students, while Lee Nordstrum and Selene Gittings are working with a women's self-help group project at Babrala, located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Valerie Fitton-Kane is joining a Rural Entrepreneurship Development Programme (REDP) at Mithapur, situated on the tip of Gujarat, a state on the West coast of India and very close to the India-Pakistan border.

Grant Jackson is also working at Babrala, but on an animal husbandry project exploring a dairy co-operative initiative, a movement that ushered in the milk revolution or the White Revolution in India in the 1970's.

Their stay in India and part of their airfare are sponsored by the Tata Group.

Community Development Projects in India are livelihood projects for the poor, mostly rural population, facilitated through a number of schemes, an example being the micro credit scheme, which loans very small amounts of money to very poor people.

The REDP similarly explores ways in which individuals and communities can become financially sustainable, usually through locally suitable livelihood measures like handicraft, farming projects or sewing projects.

The MOU with Tata is one of five signed by the Vice-Chancellor Professor Alison Richard during her visit to India last January.

Professor Dame Sandra Dawson, who chairs the Cambridge India Partnership and accompanied the Vice-Chancellor on that visit, said, "The Cambridge India Partnership is a long-term, resilient and evolving relationship founded on scholarly and research-based collaborations, two-way exchanges at every academic level, and at the interface of academia with NGOs, business, and public policy, commitment to capacity building for a global future in both Cambridge and India and ever strengthening relations with alumni."

"We aim to further develop collaborations and partnerships between Cambridge and India involving scholars at every level from undergraduates to the most distinguished Professor", Dawson added.