THE Joji Ilagan Career Center Foundation Inc. is pouring over a million pesos worth of educational vouchers for its three culinary and hospitality competitions and programs designed for students.
Joji Ilagan Bian, founder of the school, said these competitions are the Junior Ichef Culinary Challenge (JICC), Clash of Young Hoteliers, and the Young Global Women Leaders Program.
"For this year, we are giving away more. We intend to have greater impact among the students for greater appreciation of culinary, hospitality, and tourism," she said.
JICC, in its 10th year, is a culinary competition open for Grade 10 to 12 from Davao city's chosen schools. For this year, participants will work on the theme: Davao Flavors: Local taste with international twist.
The grand champion of JICC this year will take home P250,000 worth of educational voucher.
A new competition launched by the school is Clash of Young Hoteliers, an avenue where students will be honed as a competitive hotelier. The competition, which is open to Grade 12 students, has two categories: tour guiding and table napkin folding.
Another new program launched is the Young Global Women Leaders Program, a mentoring program that aims to develop new generation of women leaders. This is open for women public school students ages 16 to 18 in Grade 12.
"We want to develop women leaders because we believe that when you educate the women, you educate the world. We are going to select 10 students from public schools and bring them here to my school and the mentoring will happen here for a year," Bian said.
She added the program will continue after the year-long mentorship as these young women will be paired with a woman leader mentor.
"We are working on the public schools as we want to provide them that opportunity which they rarely have. We also want the youth to look at culinary and hospitality as a career," she said.