Volunteer Work at the Heart of the Community

Since 2018, Sciences Po requires all of its undergraduate students to participate in the Civic Learning Programme, a compulsory civic engagement over the three years of the Bachelor’s degree. This programme offers them the chance to learn and understand citizenship and social responsibility through a community internship. Iin this video, two students share their testimonies about their internships and how they have benefited them.

Caroline Pernes, in her first-year internship, worked in a prison and organised a recycling programme with the help of the prisoners. Michaël Saillot helped to organise leisure activities for residents of a retirement home.

These internships show students the value of working in the community and of social responsibility. Students use their pre-existing academic knowledge and put it into practice in the real world. The community work is usually a month long and carried out over the summer. These community projects are assessed in final year, through an analytical report.

Be it focused on education, the environment, culture, social justice, or health, the first-years have engaged with their communities and gained experience in a wide range of sectors. To help students find their projects, an internship forum with partner institutions and associations took place on the 25th January on the Paris campus.

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