24 October 2011, Singapore – The Infocomm Accessibility Centre (IAC) announced today a strategic partnership between the Centre and Tribal DDB, an international digital marketing agency in Singapore. This partnership will see IAC and Tribal DDB working together to enable more people with disabilities, starting with the offering of internship opportunities for IAC trainees to hone their IT and design skills in a real-life work environment.

Tribal DDB has been working with IAC since June 2011 by offering marketing and advertising support to the Centre. Through this collaboration, the agency has taken the relationship a step further with the commitment to offer internship positions in web design and development to current IAC trainees, so they will have the opportunity to learn new skills from seasoned professionals working with the agency.

This collaboration will also add another boost to IAC’s effort to provide more industry-relevant training to its trainees.

“We are heartened to have the opportunity to collaborate with Tribal DDB on this internship programme as it offers an added avenue for our trainees to hone their newly-acquired IT skills, with mentors who can guide them on actual projects. This will be a great way for them to ease into the working world as they will have a better understanding of what is expected of them when working in an office setting,” said Royson Poh, Senior Assistant Director of IAC.

Tribal DDB is equally enthusiastic about the programme, as it lends them a chance to give back to the society and help people with disabilities brush up on the IT skills they have learnt while training at IAC.

“We are moved by the determination of some of these IAC trainees as they have shown a fierce commitment to excel and perform the skills they have picked up during their training modules. After working with IAC on their marketing outreach programmes for the past few months, we feel that we are in a great position to offer these trainees a conducive mentorship environment where our staff can impart some useful life skills to the trainees so they can prepare themselves for their vocational journey ahead,” said Jeff Cheong, managing director and executive creative director, Tribal DDB Singapore.

The six-week-long internship programme will end in December 2011. IAC is managed by the Society for the Physically Disabled (SPD) and the centre was formed in July 2008 through a People-Public-Private initiative between Microsoft Singapore, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, National Council of Social Service and the Tote Board. It is the only centre in Singapore that provides IT training across disability types, offering people with disabilities the chance to achieve industry-recognised certification to prepare them for job placements in the open employment market.

Since its inception, more than 4,300 training places comprising IT training sessions ranging from computer fundamentals to digital music, digital animation, web design, Microsoft Office functions and IT apprenticeship training sessions have been offered to more than 1,200 trainees.