Raleigh, North Carolina – This summer, mano-Y-ola’s fifth consecutive internship program has begun, with two separate internship programs funded by the United States Department of Agriculture: a traveling internship in the Southeastern U.S. and a virtual internship in Puerto Rico. Seven Traveling Hispanic Student Outreach Ambassadors will join Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) offices in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia to learn from experts and serve NRCS offices. Throughout this process, they will engage with mano-Y-ola staff for professional coaching and prepare to deliver a final project at the end of their internship. The five Virtual Hispanic Student Outreach Ambassadors will take part in Cultivar Learning Network’s curriculum training through the platform Moodle. These courses include technical training in conservation practices, business management skills, job application advisement, and leadership training, so students are equipped with a solid foundation to pursue the conservation path. Using this knowledge, they will work with a local farmer and complete natural resource conservation projects on farms across Puerto Rico.
Over the five years, the project has been overseen by Program Manager, Patricia Morales, who shares, “Internships provide such a valuable experience for a young professional’s development. It can ‘make it or break it’ for a student to ask themselves, ‘Is this is what I want to do in life?’ For me, it’s rewarding to learn about each student and to help them pursue their goals. For the students, the internship gives them the opportunity to have new experiences, explore new cultures, learn about the professional world, and use their knowledge and experience to contribute to the future of agriculture.” Patricia is instrumental in each step of the process for these interns from the hiring and onboarding process, to leading Virtual Ambassadors through module training, to personally visiting Traveling Ambassadors in field offices across the U.S.
From 2018 to 2022, 55 students have interned with mano-Y-ola. Of these interns, several Virtual Ambassadors presented their agricultural projects in the annual Hispanic Farmers and Agricultural Professionals Symposia, and three interns from both the Virtual and Traveling internship programs have led mano-Y-ola’s Student Advisory Collective. These students are now young professionals working in agriculture, who keep abreast of the trends affecting young Hispanic agricultural professionals and help mano-Y-ola select their new group of interns. mano-Y-ola Outreach Specialist, Ricardo Lanzó, acts as Liaison to the Collective, meeting with them monthly and overseeing their current project: creating educational conservation farming videos with expert farmers to be available as resources to those starting off in agriculture.
mano-Y-ola is proud to see its team members and former interns continuing to “pass it forward,” mentoring and inspiring the next generation in conservation agriculture. Application information for mano-Y-ola’s fall internship programs will be available in July. Follow our social media or visit our website, latinofarmersusa.com, to keep apprised of these upcoming career and educational opportunities for young Hispanic agricultural professionals.
- written by Jessica Roqueburg
