Coconut-based Women Entrepreneurship Initiative

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our initiative providing entrepreneurship support to coconut-based women and their families. Copra which is the dried meat of coconuts is the main product of coconut farmers and copra is produced mainly for cooking oil with by products used as animal feed. There is stiff competition of copra prices mainly with palm oil and coconut farmers especially women have experienced low prices since 2 years ago already. The need to guide and nurture them to be entrepreneurial assumes much significance. This reporting period we are happy to announce that we have completed the construction of a modest training center wherein local coconut farmers can be trained on entrepreneurship and local livelihoods. We were able to train also our first batch of trainees with small support from the government. We would like to scale-up this effort and train more women within the province of Misamis Oriental where we are located. Hoping for your continuing support.

Very sincerely yours,

Cora Sayre

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generosity in supporting our initiative providing support to coconut-based women entrepreneurs. This reporting period is difficult financially for local villagers as the problem of the Coronavirus pandemic has still no end in sight. Even the remotest of village is affected as health protocols are often disregarded in the quest for villagers to earn income. During this reporting period we focus our attention to helping small-scale entrepreneurs by providing technical and fund support thanks to GlobalGiving as well as local donations that enabled us to do so. Local entrepreneurs provide materials and services in their own areas and therefore the frequent lock-downs do not affect them so much. We were able to assist a total of 25 entrepreneurs in this manner. Hoping for your continuing generosity.

Very sincerely yours,

Cora Sayre

Dear Friend,

Warmest greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our initiative helping women coconut farmers. This project assumes great significance especially this time when the Coronavirus pandemic is still spreading, wrecking havoc to health and wellness of individuals and specially affecting those who are very poor and economically deprived. This reporting period, we scale-up our product processing and marketing effort of raw products grown under coconuts with the enrollment of one of our active leaders to an entrepreneurship course organized by the government. One of the products of the course is the consolidation of raw products that can be grown under coconut trees such as corn, turmeric, ginger and lemon grass and produce organic coffee with the aim also of benefiting directly growers of these products. At a distance of 10 square meters coconut planting, there are a lot of spaces where shade-loving crops can be grown so this line of entrepreneurship. Hoping for your continuing help and generosity.

Very sincerely yours,

Cora Sayre

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our project providing pump-priming assistance to coconut-based women entrepreneurs. This initiative is gaining traction as our barrios are mostly coconut-producing and with planting distance of 10 meters x 10 meters, there is a lot of agro-economic activity that can be done in order to improve the productivity of the farm. There are high-valued crops that can be grown aside from vegetables and this reporting period we are promoting the growing of cacao and then providing value by the processing of cacao fruits into artisanal chocolates. cacao grows well in partially-shaded area and our country is one of the places where cacao grows well. We aim to include 500 women entrepreneurs in this venture, later on organizing them as a local association. Hoping for your continuing support.

Very sincerely yours,

Cora

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our initiative improving the living conditions of women farmers who are dependent on coconuts for their livelihood. The prevailing price of dried coconut meat remains very low as the competition from palm oil remains very stiff. This situation has resulted to loss of income by farmers and their inability to provide for the basic ameneties in the household. In previous reports, we provided women farmers with the tools, resources and capabilities in order to process raw agricultural products into high-valued food and health items. We are succeeding in this but our problem is that the production area is not well-constructed. There is a need to construct a small building by which processing, packing and labeling of the products is done. We have succeeded in doing this with one women's association and the result is promising. 

Hoping for your continuing support.

Very sincerely yours,

Cora