Two MA in Food Studies graduate students from The American University of Rome recently undertook internships at the Cocoa of Excellence Programme, Bioversity International & CIAT.
Jamie Willard's experience
During my five-month internship experience with the Cocoa of Excellence unit, which is led by Alliance Bioversity International and International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), I was introduced to the beauty and diversity of fine flavor cocoa beans. Cocoa of Excellence is a program dedicated to promoting and preserving the genetic diversity of cocoa and to recognizing and promoting high-quality cocoa. As an intern, I mainly assisted with processing the 235 cocoa bean samples submitted by cocoa producers and cooperatives globally for the 2021 International Cocoa Awards. The five-kilo samples were shipped to Rome where they are ground into liquor and made into chocolate using the same recipe for all samples to ensure the value is judged based exclusively on the cocoa beans. The samples are uniformly packed and assigned blind codes to ensure their anonymity for the competition. During this process, when opening packages from all corners of the globe, I experienced diverse aromas and cocoa beans of a spectrum of shapes and colors.
This internship was critical to my Master in Food Studies experience because, besides being an introduction to the beauty and challenges of cocoa, it also guided me toward the selection of my current MA thesis research topic.
Sierra Berardelli's experience
Over the course of eleven weeks, I completed an internship working with the Cocoa of Excellence Programme. My interest was piqued to intern with this organization because of the tropical agriculture research conducted by CIAT. My previous experience studying tropical ecology in Panama and Costa Rica felt relevant to the research conducted by the Alliance, particularly on tropical agriculture.
The Cocoa of Excellence competition strives to safeguard cocoa diversity by celebrating diverse flavor and quality globally while showcasing smallholder farmers and bringing know-how to the industry through developed cocoa evaluation tools. After researching the program and examining the social media platforms of CoEx, I was given the role of taking over social media. In addition to creating and managing the social media content, I also assisted with various communications work.
I strongly believe that this internship has better prepared me for entering the professional workforce by giving me hands-on work experience and allowing me to experience what it is like to work with an influential organization in the food and agriculture industry that deals with sustainability, rural development, climate change, and food security— concepts that I am currently studying while completing the Master of Science in Food Studies at The American University of Rome (AUR).