CHARLOTTETOWN – April 21, 2015 – Twenty-five postsecondary students from PEI will have an opportunity to get a good preview of their career, here in their own province of birth, as they participate in the PERCÉ internship program this summer.

Back for a second year as program coordinator, Rachel Chappell says she is extremely impressed with the fact that almost 100 students applied to participate in this 12th edition of PERCÉ. Regrettably, organizers can’t accept all those who applied; luckily, this year, they’re taking five more students than usual.

“The youth are selected via a rigid scoring system,” explains the coordinator. “By coincidence this year, quite a few of the youth accepted into the program are studying in the field of health. Others are in education, engineering or the arts. And the majority are francophone or bilingual. The challenge, now, is to find them a summer job that is pertinent to their field of studies.”

She notes that PERCÉ was conceived specifically to integrate young people into the Island workforce and to give them a chance to establish valuable contacts in their field here on PEI. The global objective of the program is to convince these youth, even if they’re studying out of province, to return to the Island once they’ve finished their studies to make a life and a career for themselves.

ORIENTATION WEEK

A week of orientation and training in early June helps participants rediscover their province along with everything it has to offer career-wise and quality-of-life-wise.

“Surveys of former participants have revealed that about 82 per cent of these young adults have already settled down on PEI or are about to do so,” she noted.

Chappell said the program reimburses employers a part of the salary they pay to the students. She therefore invites all employers who would be interested in hosting an intern this year or in the future to contact her at (902) 370-7333, Ext. 401, or at rachel@rdeeipe.org . Another option is to visit the website www.percepe.ca and to fill out a form, located in the “Employer” section. (The site is bilingual.)

“RDÉE Prince Edward Island, the provincial francophone economic development council, is proud to manage this great internship program, which has such a sizeable economic impact on the province and which is helping so much to reverse the brain-drain of our youth,” concludes Bonnie Gallant, executive director of RDÉE PEI.

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CUTLINE: Rachel Chappell, left, coordinator of the PERCÉ internship program, provides an overview of the program to potential employer Jacinthe Lemire, director of the Coopérative d’intégration francophone de l’Î.-P.-É.

 

For more information:
Rachel Chappell
Coordinator
PERCÉ program
(902) 370-7333, Ext. 401
rachel@rdeeipe.org