Thursday, January 19, 2012

Global Internship Approved

For the past two months, I've been corresponding with a contact at ACDI/VOCA in the Philippines. We finally developed the details of my internship and I was able to send in the approval of the organization to the Dean of my grad school program at Pepperdine.

So it'll be with ACDI/VOCA (Agricultural Cooperative Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance).

They provide assistance in developing countries for agricultural business, community development, and food security. They have an operation in the Philippines that has been working to improve the cocoa industry.

I will be conducting a small study for the organization examining the access, needs, and usage of finance for cocoa-based farming families. It will involve visiting farms, interviewing farmers, collecting data, and preparing a report for the organization. I will explore the opportunities and constraints for farm families in the industry, including the accessibility of micro-finance to farm families. The study will also examine farm family income including non-farm income and farm income to look at profitability from farming activities.

My internship will be for two weeks on Feb. 12th through Feb. 25th  in Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao, Philippines. I will be arriving early on Jan. 31st through Feb. 11th to visit my mom in the northern island of Luzon. I'm going to try to visit some farms in the North while I'm up there though so the internship experience will be a little longer than two weeks.

Everything is coming together quite nicely and I'm so excited to be going soon!

1 comment: