MAYA Interns: Going Beyond the Principles
Early March this year, the Department of Agriculture – Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) opened up an internship program that attracted numerous agriculture graduates across the country. The quote, “many have tried but only a few are chosen,” emerged as the selection of interns was cut by 793 from the pool of 3,000 applicants. Sixteen of which were the chosen few from Caraga region. Given the existing landscape of challenges in the agriculture sector, the Mentoring and Attracting Youth in Agribusiness or MAYA was established to expand a new gamut of the agriculture sector that
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|July 17-23, 2021
is profitable, lucrative, and enticing. That is the reason why the internship program was created in order to develop a competent, highly-skilled, and employment-ready youthful workforce. It has also been noted that the workforce in the sector has been aging – the reason why MAYA seeks to take on the challenge. Challenge disguised as opportunity Ready to take on the challenge were the 16 interns from four provinces in the region. One intern that outstands her batch because of her drive to innovate technology for Cacao is Ana Fe Daal from Buenavista, Agusan del
Norte. Daal was not new to internship programs since she was one of the agriculture students all over the Philippines, that was sent to Israel to further her capability on the field when she was still in her undergraduate studies. “During my college days, I was one of the chosen agricultural students that were sent to Israel to improve what I learned in the field. But even though I can say that I collectively had all the knowledge needed, I still have that urge to improve on my craft. That is the reason why I applied to MAYA and luckily garnered a spot out of thousands of applications,” Daal said. Daal who chose the Entrepreneurship Track of the program envisioned to improve technology and processing on Cacao commodity. However, she no longer has to envision as she clinched one of the ten spots for the Best MAYA Intern Business Proposal Competition that was held last June where she focused on Tablea Processing and Marketing. “One of the reasons that pushed me to pursue tablea is because, as a daughter of a cacao
Caraga INFOCUS
