In my first internship program, I started the old school way of asking for a weekly report. This was pre-twitter. I found that short statuses of what the interns were working on gave me better feedback and allowed me to redirect them more easily.

In my specific case, I sent all my payments through my sister-in-law who acted as pay master. She did a great job especially when I implemented the pay for performance measures that made payments variable based on performance.

I would suggest that one good well-established way to send money to the Philippines is https://www.xoom.com.

If you can't find a pay master, you can send payments directly to the interns parents. If they have a bank account, payments can go in fairly quickly.

I know in my case, having family run the intership finances made it easier than it might be for just an average person on the street. I think there is value in building up  trust and slowly growing some pay master type contacts that  help you administer your internship program. Maybe you could start with my sister-in-law! She still has 2 kids in the university where I ran the internship who could get payments to interns.

So I don't have official numbers but in Filipino tradition, I'll take 1 direct source and 1 second hand source to give you a range of what the bigger companies are paying.

As of March 2010, I'm hearing that newly minted computer science graduates are getting between 15,000P - 30,000 P per month in salary. Add to this benefits like medical insurance, life insurance, and vacation (probably 20%-30% cost of salary is a good approximation if it's anything like here). This translates to $300 - $700 USD per month OR $3600 - $8400 per year. Round it out and you can roll out resources for under $10,000 per year.

There is a true growth opportunity to work with newly minted grads interested in doing side projects for both accelerated experience and mentorship. If you were to find newly minted comp sci grads willing to do side jobs, a generous offer if we do the math would be:

30,000P per month * 12 months / 2000 hours per year = 180 P per hour => 180 P / 45P to $1 rate = $4/hour.

It's reasonable that a new grad with not as much responsibility at work could afford 10-20 hours to do side projects for you at $40 for 10 hours or $80 for 20 hours. I suggest you package up your requests as small defined projects.

* since they get benefits from their company, no need to include that cost in the equation.

The Filipino college summer break goes from about the last week of March to the first week of June.

This wiki could serve a lot of folks including:

• People who want to remotely or locally run a web internship without too much formaility.
• Programmers looking for extra hands who can move your Drupal projects faster in exchange for some coordination and mentorship.
• Programmers on the management track looking to get experience with managing / outsourcing.
• Filipinos abroad looking for a general way to donate their expertise in computer science towards helping students in the Philippines

"You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, we all want to change the world." - The Beatles

Abstract:

The Cognitive Metaphors Filipino Web Internship program started in 2006 with one student. In 2009, I took on 5 students to continue to build out web communities that I am passionate about using the Drupal content management system. My overall motivation is to leverage my talents and eventually create opportunities for my family back home in the town of Plaridel, Bulacan, Philippines. My grandfather, Emilio Garcia, once served as Mayor of Plaridel during the Japanese occupation in WWII, 1945.

The following is a cookbook that I hope others will follow to promote interest in Computer Science in the Philippines. Please feel free to adapt these ideas to the communities that you are most passionate about. Young people need many more opportunities to apply significant hours of supervised practice if they are to become proficient in this craft. Malcom Gladwell's Outliers claims you need 10,000 hours of practice to be really good in any endeavor you wish to master.

--Anthony