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Florida-based international cruise company Carnival Cruise Line (Carnival) has formed a partnership with Philippine Merchant Marine Academy (PMMA) and STI, one of the largest networks of college schools in the country, to allow Filipinos to pursue their dream of taking up maritime studies and to work onboard some of the biggest cruise ships in the world.
As part of the partnership, PMMA will provide training programs in various merchant marine fields to prepare Pinoy students for shipboard training onboard Carnival ships, as well as work with Carnival in selecting students who will receive cadetship, internship, and employment opportunities.
STI Educational Services Group, Inc. (STI ESG) or STI Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Institute (STI NAMEI) will devote a section of its school in Manila for courses related to culinary and housekeeping. Part of the partnership involves exploring the possibility of recruiting STI NAMEI graduates of marine transportation and marine engineering for potential employment with Carnival.
Being widely popular across the world, and with incoming new ships to add to its already impressive 200-strong fleet, Carnival continuously hires people from various backgrounds. To date, Carnival’s workforce is in the thousands and consists of a broad mix of workers from over 200 countries.
Leveraging further
According to Bettina Deynes, Carnival’s Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer, investing in the Philippines and partnering with PMMA and STI is “about leveraging further.”
“More than bringing a lot of expertise and knowledge, the Filipino community carries our values and identity of having fun, so Carnival wants to go beyond providing traditional roles. We want to make it across all functions — captains, chief engineers, hotel directors, chefs. Every position where we could really find the best qualified team members,” she said during the recently held MOA signing ceremony.
“Our vision is to expand the careers of our Filipino crew. Hopefully one day we will have a captain and a chief engineer from the Philippines.”
Carnival’s Vice President for Crew and Travel Operations, Richard Brearley, added that “the Philippines is the backbone of Carnival’s sourcing.”
“Investing in the country is about developing people, it’s about giving them careers and lifestyle choices,” he said.
For the nation’s future
The vision is to give opportunities to Filipino maritime students not just from the country’s capital but from other areas as well. To this end, Carnival and its recruitment agency United Philippine Lines (UPL) have been working together in creating a system that aims to develop potential seafarers outside Manila.
“To be able to hand-hold Filipino seafarers from the time they graduate from school until the time they go onboard cruise ships like Carnival has been our Holy Grail,” UPL Chief Operations Officer Leo Oscar Tanseco said.
“It’s rare to find a partner like Carnival that is fully invested and fully embedded in the whole process. We’re very excited to have an international partner that’s working with us towards this goal.”
During the signing ceremony, STI Holdings, Inc. president Monico Jacob expressed the company’s pride in partnering with Carnival. “With our partnership with Carnival, our students can be confident that they will get the best training and they have somewhere to go once they graduate,” he noted.
PMMA Philippine Merchant Marine Academy superintendent commodore Joel Abutal said that their partnership with Carnival aims not only to train the brightest maritime professionals in the country, but also to contribute to nation-building.
He said, “We will help create jobs for the masses, as well as improve the efficiency of the country’s transport system, especially in the maritime sector.”
Carnival has plenty of potential jobs waiting for students and graduates of PMMA and STI ESG or STI NAMEI including demi chef de partie, cook assistants or commis, electro-technical cadet and Junior electro-technical officer, and refrigeration cadet.
To know more about these roles or to check Carnival’s full job listing, please visit https://shipjobs.carnival.com/.
