Internships & Traineeships

Principle

Iguality does not host unpaid internships. We believe unpaid internships normalise unpaid work and exclude people who cannot afford to work without income, which conflicts with our mission. As we cannot pay interns ourselves, we host interns whose placement is funded by Erasmus+ or a comparable grant, with one exception for curricular psychology placements (see below). Iguality never charges interns a fee.

Funded internships and traineeships

This is the standard route for all types of internships and traineeships.

• Interns must have Erasmus+ funding or a comparable grant or scholarship covering their placement.
• Iguality actively supports interns in obtaining and managing this funding, including signing the required documents, completing evaluations and contributing to reports.
• Placements are part time, with a recommended 20 hours and a maximum of 30 hours per week.
• Where a candidate cannot obtain funding, we encourage them to look for paid internships or other funded placements elsewhere.

Exception: curricular psychology placements

We may host psychology students without external funding when all of the following apply:

• The placement is curricular, meaning it is required for their degree and formalised through an agreement with their university.
• It takes place within our psychosocial support programme and follows a written learning plan agreed with the university.
• The placement is part time, with a recommended 15 hours and a maximum of 25 hours per week, so that the intern has time for paid work and other activities.
• The intern is supervised by a qualified psychologist from the Iguality team.
• Interns may provide individual psychosocial support alongside our volunteer team. This adds to our capacity and never replaces paid roles.
• Interns are only assigned cases of low complexity, agreed with their supervisor.
• Placements can also include group activities, case discussions, coordination meetings and programme work.

Important notes:

• Even where funding is not a condition, we still encourage these interns to look into grants or other support they may be eligible for.
• The nature of our services for psychology students: Iguality provides psychosocial and psychoeducational support, not clinical therapy, and is not a registered health centre.

Selection and capacity

• All interns, funded or not, go through Iguality's standard application process.
• We host a limited number of placements per year, depending on supervision capacity.

Legal and administrative requirements

• Agreement: every internship requires a signed agreement with the intern's university or sending institution, naming a tutor at Iguality.
• Insurance: Iguality holds separate insurance covering interns.
• Social Security, foreign universities: students enrolled at a foreign university or institution do not need to be registered with Spanish Social Security, as they fall outside the scope of Disposición Adicional 52ª LGSS (Criterio Interpretativo 3/2024, DGOSS).
• Social Security, Spanish universities: students enrolled at a Spanish university must be registered with Social Security via their university, including for unpaid placements.
• Educational purpose: tasks must be connected to the intern's learning plan and must never replace paid roles.