Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines Ilan Fluss urged young Dabawenyos to avail of their country’s internship program on agriculture.
Together with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), Israel is giving the youth a chance to go to Israel for an internship program in agriculture for 11 months.
“We are offering this program which we are going to do together with TESDA of sending interns to Israel in the agriculture sector. They can go to Israel for 11 months, they learn about agriculture and commercial farming,” Fluss told Edge Davao.
The interns will be working with Israeli farmers to learn and understand the best practices of modern farming. They will be receiving a salary for their work.
“By the end of the 11 months, they would submit a project proposal and when they come back home they will be able to save money because, in the five days a week of working, they get a salary as students. In Israel anybody who works, even if they are students, receives a student salary so they can save money, learn best practices, and when they come back here the idea is they can implement what they studied in Israel,” Fluss said.
This year, Israel is expecting to receive and invite 550 students from the Philippines to join this program in coordination with TESDA.
“It is more of a vocational training. The challenge is when they come back how to make sure that they are immersed into the sector. Because they are well-trained now, other countries like in Europe and New Zealand, recruit them. The idea is for them to come back here and work here,” Fluss said.
The program is open to all who have TESDA training. But Fluss said they are targeting younger people for the internship program.
“They have to be connected to agriculture like farming, working with cooperatives, they can be students graduating from agriculture, can be agriculturists, as long as they have the basic tools and understanding,” he said.
Interested applicants can get all the information at the website of TESDA.
“We are committed to continuing this program. I am going to talk to the Mayor (Baste Duterte) when I meet him including with this issue,” Fluss said.
Fluss also said Israel has been supporting one school in Mintal, Davao City.
It can be recalled that in 2018, former Mayor Sara Duterte signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) of “Excellence in Education: A Lighthouse Project” with PassItForward chairman Shmuel Weiss and witnessed by former Israel Ambassador to the Philippines Effie Ben Matityau.
The project was designed to enhance education in Davao City public schools, starting with the Mintal National Comprehensive High School as selected by the Department of Education (DepEd).
The project aims to improve the delivery of quality education to Davao learners by providing capacity-building activities or training for the teachers on the Innovation, Science and Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (i-STEAM) curriculum.
