Feature: Internship 2ONEs of Batch 2021: BE

5/21/2021 06:05:00 PM Media Center 0 Comments

The UPIS Business and Entrepreneurship track (BE) is designed for students who are planning to enter the field of business in the future. The curriculum for Grade 12 students in this track includes a two-week internship program every year, both on and off-campus of the University of the Philippines Diliman. In spite of the pandemic, internships were successfully carried out online this year from March 1-14 via Zoom meetings and other platforms.

Through the eyes of Batch 2021 BE students themselves, let’s now look into their internship sites:

The UP College of Home Economics (CHE) Costume Collection Museum is an ethnographic and historical museum, which started with the CHE Costume Collection. It focuses on curating and preserving historical Filipino costumes, mainly Filipino dresses that showcase indigenous clothing and textile. In addition, the museum also houses accessories such as shoes, bags, belts, veils, and hats.

Creating marketing strategies and materials for the museum was Hiraya Brito’s favorite internship activity. She said that it was the easiest since she and her co-interns had experience in making marketing strategies and editing publication materials from their Business and Entrepreneurship classes. It was also exciting for her because they were given the opportunity to propose and experiment with different marketing strategies for other businesses or museums.

Hiraya added that the first week was a struggle for both her and her co-interns. They were tasked to do a medium proposal and were overwhelmed by the whole activity. They had a misunderstanding about the guidelines, which required them to redo everything that they made.

Nevertheless, Hiraya was able to enhance her knowledge, creativity, and time management skills. “I realized the importance of constructive criticism since it helped me identify my mistakes and learn how to avoid them,” she shared.

She also mentioned that all the lessons that were taught will be valuable to her in the future.

Link Clothing Boutique has multiple local branches and online platforms. It elevates basic pieces like family shirts, couple shirts, kids’ tees, and shorts into stylish and trendy outfits. It offers affordable products for its lower middle-class target market.

Julianne Todas is a former intern at Link Clothing Boutique. She considered interacting with their supervisor Sir DJ Cuasay through online Zoom meetings her favorite part of the internship program for through these interactions, she gained a lot of knowledge from his firsthand experiences and tips. She learned how important it is to identify the business’ target market and how it is crucial for a company to focus on the wants and needs of the identified target instead of only focusing on what they think would be beneficial for their company.

MCJC Commissary seeks innovation, growth, and sustainability as it delivers consistency and builds client trust. It is a company owned by the Cuasay siblings—yes, the same Cuasay from Link Clothing Boutique—who are dedicated to adding value to customers’ businesses by endorsing the highest standard in food quality and safety. Under it are the following brands: The Cupcake Lab PH, Lucille PH, Celebrations PH, and Bread, Set, Go.

Marie Manahan chose creating publicity materials, giving suggestions for special events promotions, and commenting on how to improve the company’s official social media accounts, such as their Instagram and Facebook, as her favorite tasks during the program. She also noted the life and business lessons from Sir DJ Cuasay.

During the program, Marie’s supervisor made sure that they were able to learn despite the current situation. Thus, she learned what skills were necessary and what things were important to keep in mind before establishing their own business. She also recalled the story about how the Cuasays’ businesses got through the pandemic. Her takeaway from the story is to keep thinking and innovating for your business to be resilient in hard times.

Having become one of the country’s first fast food chains after its establishment in 1890, Pancit ng Taga Malabon prides itself on coining and popularizing the term ‘pancit malabon’ and is now best known for this party staple, as well as other Filipino comfort food.

Alliah Omar shared that two out of the 21 current stores of Pancit ng Taga Malabon were assigned for their internship: the Katipunan and the Marikina branches. The interns’ main task was to handle the social media pages of both branches.

They reportedly had to set up the social media pages from scratch because Pancit ng Taga Malabon had no existing Facebook pages then. With the limited time that was given to them, they struggled to plan effective marketing strategies. Nonetheless, this did not stop Alliah from enjoying creating publicity materials for the store.

“Since the pandemic struck, Pancit ng Taga Malabon struggled with their sales because they did not have a strong position online, unlike their competitors,” she explained.

The importance of adapting to modern changes is one of the greatest lessons Alliah learned after working for the store. “After setting up and promoting Pancit ng Taga Malabon on Facebook, customers can now easily purchase their favorite Pancit Malabon!”

The Coffee Science Center is a café that promotes local coffee and brings hope to local coffee producers as they share sound, scientific, and extensive knowledge on quality coffee while keeping an eye on the origins of coffee and the science behind coffee practices. It also promotes social equity as well as cultural and environmental protection to secure the long-term sustainability of coffee production.

Erin Ramos experienced being an intern at the SGD Coffee Science Center. The interns were assigned to encode receipts. Even though it was their only task, she said that she genuinely enjoyed it. She described it as “chill and productive at the same time”. She also found it tough at first, since she did not start right away as soon as the receipts were delivered to them at the start of their first week. This resulted in her staying up late to finish the task by their deadline.

With that being said, Erin did come across obstacles as she went through the internship program. She mentioned that she had difficulties in managing her time but also remarked that their bosses were understanding and were satisfied with their work. She was able to adjust and had an easier time during the second week of the program. In the course of the internship, Erin realized that communicating with their bosses and asking relevant questions were crucial in improving as an intern.

The Leg Room is a neighborhood restaurant owned by Ms. Ma. Eloisa R. Painaga, and it is located in Valenzuela. It specializes in fast food lunch sets and snack items like chicken, pasta, and burgers, among others. The items on the menu are pocket-friendly, with prices ranging from 25 to 80 pesos.

Designing meal plans was Jhoanna Elona’s favorite activity out of all the activities she did in The Leg Room. She didn't use to think about food that much, but because of the activity, she learned to have a well-balanced meal, which is interesting for her.

Since the internship program was executed online, Jhoanna admitted that she also had some struggles. “I think the asynchronous learning mode has made this experience difficult since we couldn’t really do much,” she said. She feels like it would have been better if the whole experience had face-to-face interaction, in order for her to learn how to more effectively serve food to people and prepare a meal.

Even though the whole experience was done online, Jhoanna enjoyed her stay—especially the time when she and her co-interns had to come up with marketing strategies to help promote the restaurant. She added that the pandemic has been hard on businesses so this contribution and this whole experience not only helped her but also the restaurant.

Underdog Fitness PH (UFPH) offers both online and offline services, amenities, and research-based fitness programs developed by coaches from UP Diliman’s College of Human Kinetics. Their programs also utilize less workout equipment compared to other fitness centers.

Andrei Co said that, for their internship, UFPH assigned him and his co-interns to make an online market survey for the gym. To exercise their thinking skills in business, a brainstorming activity for a makeshift business idea and making a market survey for this was also given by the gym. They came up with a plan of selling ready-to-wear and custom-made vintage shirts. For him, this was the most fun part of the internship program.

Because they only had two weeks to develop the market survey for the gym, Andrei encountered time restrictions. Also, the pressure they received from ensuring that the survey would be detailed and comprehensive enough was immense, since their creation would be used by the UFPH itself for its promotions.

All activities given by the UFPH were done in groups—and this led him to realize the importance of communication when it came to working well with others in order to do a task properly.

“I also realized that running a business is all about taking risks. Hardships will eventually happen such as the occurrence of [a] pandemic,” Andrei noted.

Supervised by professional nutritionist-dietitians, the University Food Service (UFS) provides students, faculty, staff, and guests with wholesome, safe, and reasonably priced food and doubles as a site for the Practical Training Program for graduating college students.

One of the requirements given by the UFS to its interns was filming themselves while baking. Being fond of baking herself because of its relaxing effect, Zemirah Aragones named this activity her favorite. Plus, she had a chance to watch and appreciate the videos made by her fellow interns.

Her internship experience was met with different types of problems, though. There was a point when she had to contact her supervisor, teachers, and co-interns to inform them that she would be late or risked not attending their meetings due to internet connection problems.

Also, she believed that her outputs on market prices would have been a lot more accurate if only she had been able to go to actual supermarkets instead of online sites.

Dealing with the new learning setup surely was nothing short of difficult especially for first-timers like her, so Zemirah said that patience was a must. She also shared that as the representative of the UFS interns, she was tasked to communicate with their supervisors. She saw how this made way for the enhancement of her leadership skills and self-confidence.

The UP Institute of Small Scale Industries assists and helps to promote and develop micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) in the country through training, research, and extension.

One of Robert Ambat and his co-interns’ responsibilities in the program was to write comprehensive articles about a business topic for publication on their website and social media pages. Robert was able to write an article about women in social entrepreneurship and another one about enterprise resilience during disasters and disruptions.

“I enjoyed the process of writing these articles, especially during my own desk research and consultation with the experts in UP ISSI. The topics we had are not usually covered in traditional business education as they require knowledge in certain disciplines so it was fascinating to know they existed. Delving into business’s intersectionality with other fields like disaster resilience and community development was a really interesting activity and taught me that business is never in isolation from the society it operates in,” Robert said.

Robert also added that because their internship was output-based, they weren't necessarily confined to the 40-hour limit of the internship program. They were given a lot of tasks so they went beyond the time, which was tiring for them at some points. Nevertheless, Robert thinks that all the outputs that they made and all the lessons that they acquired were all still worth it.

In his whole experience of the internship program, he learned a lot more about the MSME sector in the Philippines. He said that it is extremely important to our economy as it makes up the majority of the jobs in our country. For this reason, it also plays a large role in the improvement of the living standards of Filipinos. In his time of work in UP ISSI, he saw how there was a lack of sufficient infrastructure and social support to boost these MSMEs and said that we still have a long way to go in legislation and education to ensure the consistent growth of our local MSMEs and make economic growth more accessible.

“In terms of my personal experience, I picked up a lot about typical workplace interactions, particularly in a work-from-home environment. With the constant stream of emails and Zoom meetings, I got a good glimpse of what it’s like to work during these times and I was also challenged with attaining a healthy work-life balance during those two weeks,” he added.

Globally, the industry that has been hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic is the business sector. This year’s internship program made way for Batch 2021’s BE students to personally assess the impacts of the pandemic on different types of businesses—be it food, fitness, or fashion-related.

The current learning setup certainly has its limitations. It was a common sentiment that working at the actual sites could have helped them produce better outputs. This could have also further enriched their skills. They did not enter unprepared, though, as business concepts and lessons, such as marketing, came in handy.

Several topics outside the traditional business education were introduced to them. After getting a glimpse of the MSME sector, they also saw the significance of these businesses to the society and the economy. On top of honing various skills through the guidance of their supervisors, the interns did not only learn from contributing to the operations of a business, but they helped the sites as well. //by Danzar Dellomas, Sophia Luangco, Gabie Santiago