Food, Water & Energy for Haiyan Affected Areas

We’re glad to share that the community has stepped up in maintaining their production to enterprise activities in the past months. In the last report, the community ventured into enterprise development with capital incentives provided to expand activities on herbal crop processing, continued operation of the TOFA Store and Food House and starting to raise poultry, and livestock particularly swine and goat.

Timely for Drought

The Philippines is currently grueling from El Nino – agricultural land is drying up and parched, threatening food supply which is happening in some parts of the country. The demonstration farms developed in our areas grew root crops in the past months including other fruit bearing and leafy vegetables.  It has become a buffer source now of food supplements in most households as root crops can withstand prolonged dry periods and can still fully grow .   Various types of sweet potates, yam, and cassava are going to be harvested this month . It is expected that the demonstration farms will yield about 10-15 sacks of sweet potatoes, 3 sacks of yam. By May, hopefully at the onset to of the rainy season, cassava crops will be ready for harvest. It is expected tha t the crops will produce about 10 sacks.  

The community’s priority is to share the produce among organizational members, processed about a third into yam cakes and sweet potato chips to be sold at the TOFA Store and Food House. aside from directly eating the raw produce. At the rate that the drought is going, the production plan is to replenish immediately the harvest so that the supply will be sustained.   Despite the vagaries of climate change, we are still hoping the rains will start pouring by May or June which is the start of the wet season in the Philippines .

TOFA Organic Store and Food House Picking Up

The collectively operated Organic Store and Food House is still picking up as regards regular patrons particularly for its food section.   Low productivity due to the long dry spell limited a wide variety of vegetable-based menus to offer . Nevertheless, information about the existence of the store and food house is gaining ground within the municipal centers.   Employees from the local   government agencies, church, schools started to be regular customers and have placed orders for certain type of vegetables and herbal products.

To date, among the post-harvest produced, the herbal and cosmetic products have increased demands. Turmeric capsules are best sellers with the women producing 2,500 capsules in month to cope up with the demand. They are selling the capsules at U$0.30 per pack of 10 capsules. Highly in demand likewise is powdered Moringga sold at U$.40 per pack of 10 capsules.   The women are expanding to other products. They are now polishing ginger teas and ginger candy as well as mangosteen powder.

The cosmetic products best sellers are the vegetable based soap . The women are combining different herbs to produce specific type of soap for various skin toning needs. Among the herbs used are turmeric, madre de cacao, moringga, lemon grass laced with the flower local know as Ylang-ylang with its inherit aromatic element used by one of the leading international perfume brand. The soap sells at US$ .20 to .30 a piece with the one blended with Ylang-ylang flower at close to a dollar a piece. Many women and a couple of men users feel secure as regards the organic herbal ingredients utilized. In the last two months, the women have produced already 1,000 pieces of soap. Currently, there are about 65 women involved in the collective production of the soap. In the pipeline as regards product development, the women are now experimenting on the use of papaya and a green succulent sour fruit called “kamias” as another organic soap type.

Organic Poultry and Livestock Jumpstart

It was mentioned in the last report that the communities are provided small capital loans to raise poultry, goat and swine as complementary livelihood activities. About 23 women and 24 men combined availed of the cash loan incentives to jumpstart livestock raising. To date the initial stocks particularly for poultry are growing healthy in backyard set ups of the households.   They are semi-free ranged and fed with farm waste residues, stripped cassava and sweet potato from the demonstration collective gardens. Swines are fed with cooked yam leaves, mixed with papaya leaves and rice hulls from adjacent barangays. Only a small amount of booster feeds are mixed to provide nutritional balance to the protein and other mineral requirements of the swine.

Build Up of Management Skills and Organizational Cohesion

The progress of the production, post-harvest activities within a social enterprise framework will fall short without the capacity building support like skills enhancement in managing the activities, a little financial management skills helps the community manage revenues as well. Most important, strengthening their organizational unity through leadership trainings, regular assessment and planning adjustments builds community camaraderie and provides the element of support systems necessary for them as whole to face the challenges. It is worth noting that reeling off from the disaster and coming to a point where recovery is evident is partly due to the community committing themselves to do their part in picking themselves up from the rubbles of the disaster.

For SIBAT, we deemed the time is just about ripe to turn over the reigns of sustaining the initiatives they have started and we’re just glad we were there together with GlobalGiving partners giving the needed shot in the arm for them to stand up back to normalcy.