SIX young graduates of agriculture courses in Negros Occidental are among the 16 youths in Western Visayas qualified to undergo a six-month Mentoring and Attracting Youth in Agribusiness (Maya) internship program of the Department of Agriculture (DA).
DA-Western Visayas, in a Facebook post, said the internship, which started on Monday, March 15, is the government's move to develop competent, highly-skilled, and employment-ready agribusiness professionals and entrepreneurs.
The Maya program, conceptualized by the agency in 2020, will provide experiential-learning and mentoring to agriculture graduates aged 20 to 30 years old.
"After the one-week basic orientation and expectation setting, they will have the leeway to choose between employment track or entrepreneurship track as their internship pathways," it said, citing the Memorandum Circular 14 series of 2020 issued by Agriculture Secretary William Dar.
The regional line agency said that to keep them abreast of the different mandates and programs of the DA and the necessary tools in the workplace, the interns will have to undergo preparatory training and mentoring until April 9.
They shall then be deployed for their 20-week onsite internship, and shall spend another four weeks for intensive management training module.
Interns who will select the employment track will augment the workforce in the different operating units of the DA, while those who want to pursue the entrepreneurship track will immerse with the identified farmers cooperatives and associations (FCAs) in the region.
The DA through the Bureau of Agricultural Research (BAR) listed 808 qualified Maya interns nationwide who applied online.
Aside from the six agriculture graduates from Negros Occidental, the region has five other qualified interns from Iloilo, four from Aklan, and one from Capiz.
To be mentored and guided by the DA personnel and successful agri-entrepreneurs, these interns will be receiving P20,000 as monthly allowance.
For their part, they shall participate in all orientation and training, work in the required number of hours based on their terms of reference, and shall submit a regular program report to the DA.
DA-Western Visayas also said that involving youth in agriculture is the agency's strategy to address the aging population of farmers and the dwindling number of professionals focusing on the advancement of the agri-fishery sector.
The DA's Maya program targets to produce globally competitive pool of human resource as future employees of the DA or FCAs, and skilled agribusiness practitioners who could generate quality agri-fishery products and services, it added.