Internships have proven to be an effective means of adding much required skills within Civil Society groups and empowering emerging professionals. This is according to Transparency International Papua New Guinea (TIPNG) when welcoming its 6th intake of Legal Interns and its first ever Communications Intern on Wednesday 8th November. TIPNG has broken new ground by expanding the categories for short-term engagement of students from tertiary institutions in Papua New Guinea (PNG). In a statement, TIPNG Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Arianne Kassman stated that since their engagement with the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) to take on Legal interns, this has now helped them to expand. “We first began a formal partnership with the University of Papua New Guinea’s School of Law in 2017 to take on law students as legal interns during their end of year break, and the success of that collaboration has encouraged us to now include for the first time ever, a communications intern.” Over the past 6 years they have had a good number of law students through the TIPNG Legal Internship Program. “We have had a total of 17 law students empower people in Papua New Guinea to act against corruption, through the TIPNG Legal Internship Program.” “We decided to build on this program, by inviting Communications students from across all tertiary institutions in PNG to apply for our inaugural Communications Internship Program. Our Legal and Communications interns will work within TIPNG for the next 13 weeks, learning essential workplace skills and growing their professional network.” TIPNG’s Interns for 2023-2024 are as follows: • Communications Intern - Ms. Shirley Cherake, 4th Year CA, Divine Word University, • Legal Intern - Mr. Nabieu Lansana, 3rd Year LLB, University of Papua New Guinea, • Legal Intern - Ms. Abigail Kafafi, 4th Year LLB, University of Papua New Guinea, and • Legal Intern - Ms. Karen Bak, 4th Year LLB, University of Papua New Guinea. These internships have been made possible with funding from the TI Indo-Pacific Partnership for Strong, Transparent, Responsive and Open Networks for Good Governance (TI IPP STRONGG) 2020 – 2023. This funding assists chapters of Transparency International to contribute to reduced corruption in the Indo-Pacific region by empowering a strong and independent civil society voice and network that can mobilize action in support of increased accountability of public and private institutions nationally and regionally.