Cultivating world-class seafarers through training and compassion
WORLD-CLASS seafarers are products of multiple factors — quality education and training, decent welfare services, and a strong support group that spurs the crew’s innate desire to make it good in the profession.
Among these people are the trainers who do more than just train seafarers well. They instill an attitude of excellence, professionalism and responsibility that impact not just the mariners but the industry they belong to. Russel Baja belongs to this group. Baja is the general manager of Archipelago Philippines Seafarers Training Institute Inc. (Apstii), the cadetship training arm of the Archipelago Philippine Ferries Corp. (APFC), the shipping company that owns domestic Ro-Ro, FastCat.
His tenacity in training cadets onboard FastCat vessels has resulted in about 12,000 successful young blood that are now serving on international ships while some went on to work under APFC.
”This is what I like best about my job, witnessing the cadets become successful seafarers and flourish in their careers after the cadetship program with Apstii. It genuinely makes me happy whenever they visit after their contract at sea expires. I also get a great sense of pride seeing them evolve from a young cadet to a ship officer right on our ships,” Baja said.
Baja’s journey as a trainer started with Scorpio Transport and Manning Services Inc. which operates under the CAPP group of companies.
”I trained our personnel in different parts of the country until I was assigned to manage and implement the learning management system for crew and cadets of FastCat. The iLearnfastcat contains training modules that can be accessed by our crew and cadets through their smartphones,” he said.
Baja was eventually promoted to operations manager of Apstii where he took charge of the overall onboard training programs of the company. In August 2021, he was promoted to general manager.
More than his tenacity, Baja’s innate empathy sprung from his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy and theology, respectively. His deeply rooted moral and spiritual character added value to his life as a trainer and charged his interactions with compassion.
This is part of the reason why his greatest struggle with being a trainer is not the workload, but the instances when his trainees had to resign from the program.
”It is very difficult for me whenever students leave the program, especially if it is because of financial reasons. I do not normally approve of this. Our goal is to train them to become world-class seafarers and whatever cost it incurs, I discuss it with their parents and school,” Baja explained.
Baja also empathizes with aspiring seafarers who are taken advantage of by unscrupulous shipowners and agencies.
”They were given training on board vessels that are below 500 gross tonnage, which is less than the requirement of the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW) Convention,” he lamented.
As the general manager of Apstii, Baja makes sure that all aspiring seafarers under his care complete the 12-month comprehensive onboard training, currently one of the best in the country. It is powered by the latest technologies in education such as a learning management system (LMS).
It also features the use of an electronic training record book (eTRB) where cadets can personally update and monitor their training progress; this also updates their respective schools with the status of their training.
”This year we will also implement an Online Monitoring System where cadets can update the progress of their training program through their online accounts.
Through this, their schools will be able to monitor the training progress of their cadets from Daily Journal, drawings, competences in the TRB, MDSD (Crew List) down to the institutional requirements like clearance,” Baja explained.With top-notch training programs paired with its trainers’ steadfastness and compassion, Apstii is currently the preferred shipboard training provider by more than 15 schools and universities nationwide.
Baja sees this as a personal accomplishment.
”I am most proud of the achievements of our former trainees. I have been a teacher even before I entered the maritime industry; for us, seeing our students achieve their dreams is one of our greatest achievements as well,” he said.