COPE is one of the many projects administered by the Institute of Small Farms and Industries (ISFI), an NGO organized under the auspices of the Ateneo de Davao University. The COPE was made possible by a grant from the Association for Non-traditional Education in the Philippines of which the Ateneo de Davao was a founding member.

Project Objectives

1. To conduct from four to twelve skills and management trainings among 45 beneficiaries composed of cultural minorities, out-of-school youth and women entrepreneurs

2. To form three organizations

3. From the trainings, acquired, the three organizations would be enabled to access credit facilities for their community project

4. The Association for Non-traditional Education in the Philippines (ANTEP) assisted COPE in Davao Project would showcase the project

A project orientation was done last March 13, 1992 with the project staff: project coordinator, cell coordinators and other staff of the three units of the University: Ateneo Livelihood Outreach
Program (ALOP), Business Information and Training Center (BITC) and Institute for Small Farms and Industries (ISFl). The project orientation was a sort of review of project documents, leveling of
expectations, setting of target outputs especially for the first quarter of project implementation, resource allocation and setting up of schedules.

Since the project will cater to three different groups, it was agreed that the launching and multi-sectoral dialogue be conducted separately, preferably in the site of the target groups. Launching and Multi-sectoral dialogues were done simultaneously as follows:

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The launching had to be done to formally introduce the project to the target group in the presence of government and non government agencies which would have a direct or indirect contribution to the project. The multi-sectoral dialogue was envisioned to be the venue for finding out how efforts can be
coordinated towards achieving a common goal.

The launching and multi-sectoral dialogue served as good venues for information dissemination regarding the COPE-Davao Project. The information dissemination was further reinforced through person-to-person talk and dissemination by word-of-mouth and utilization of key informants.

A survey was conducted in order to find out how the project will create a difference in the lives of the participants. The impact of the project will be evaluated. Surveys were done by ALOP, BITC & ISFl within the first quarter of project implementation. Survey results were feedbacked to the target groups, and served as the basis for planning. Feedbacking and planning were conducted in separate venues and dates as follows:

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Training Programs

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Monitoring activities followed after the trainings were conducted. Hands-on/application of learnings was tested in cooperatives, individual businesses and in the case of the out-of-school youth — in the practicum part of the training.

Organizing activities were done to achieve another project objective which is organizing target beneficiaries into three. The three groups were in the different organizational stages; two in
the formation stage and one, in the strengthening stage.

Results/ Outputs

1. Three trainings were conducted for a total of 61 participants
2. Three groups were in the process of forming an organization
3. Three community profiles were prepared from the three groups

Problems Encountered and Actions Taken

Target beneficiaries identified a skills training activity (dressmaking) which could not be addressed by COPE-Davao due to resource limitations and because it is beyond the scope of work of ISFI. Some participants who were still interested in dressmaking skills were referred to ALOP which offers such course. ALOP did not have any problems since its training program has long been established. AU throughout the training period, everything went on smoothly as expected.

Initially, the BITC cell coordinator had limited the area to Davao City Women Entrepreneurs. However, after a review of logistics support for monitoring, it was considered impossible to accept just any Davao City entrepreneur client. The area focus is Toril District, Davao City but not necessarily limited to it. Another venue for area-focused seminar is being considered, e.g. the St. Joseph’s Parish House in Toril.

Insights and Remarks

1. There is an opportunity to expose the cell coordinator’s students in Entrepreneurship to the COPE-Davao participants/clients;

2. Faculty members and other resource persons signified willingness to help prepare training modules together with the women entrepreneurs;

3. COPE-Davao continuous education would need further support in terms of technical and financial assistance;

4. The project will need to actively link up with existing micro-enterprise development program of DTI and NGOs if it wants to sustain its membership and be a showcase;

5. COPE-Davao compliments well with the ongoing livelihood projects in Salaysay and will help strengthen the existing organization by involving also the women sector;

6. ALOP is grateful to ANTEP for believing and supporting the non-formal education program that is badly needed in this country.

Second Quarter – June 16 – Sept. 15,1992

1. Trainings on Food Processing for Fish, Meat and Fruits were requested.

2. Community Organizing: Post-training will focus on getting to know the women in their workplace.

3. Marketing Linkages: More small group sessions to share marketing strategies will help during planned monthly meetings with the women.

4. Post-training Activities: A micro-lending activity of COPE-Davao will be piloted with two women who attended the 1st seminar. The Cell coordinator will provide technical assistance as service of BITC.

The second quarter covered the following activities:

1) Training for Auto Mechanics:
A) ALOP – Auto-Mechanics (continuation of previous)
B) BITC – Visioning Seminar
C) ISFI – Toyo and Soap Making

2) Post Training Activities:
Monitoring
Organizing

3) Staff Meetings and Planning

4) Process Documentation

In the overall assessment, the second quarter of project implementation turned-out to be smooth sailing with the expected output satisfactorily achieved and resources are utilized within set  schedule.

Activities Conducted

Three (3) trainings were conducted as follows:

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Post-Training Activities:

A) Monitoring Results:

1. A pilot micro-lending was provided by BITC to two-women entrepreneurs, one new and the other, an old member, to try-out an integrated approach to enterprise development. Each was provided two thousand pesos (P2,000.00). A monitoring scheme was installed to document enterprise growth. Consultancy services were provided in the residences of the two women during Sundays and
Saturdays.

2. There were follow-up meetings done by ISFI staff. The women’s group in Salaysay planned the income generating  project. The group decided to undertake agri-based projects  specifically, goat-raising since there is a great demand for goat meat. Soap and toyo-making which they will produce after learning how to make them will initially be produced for household consumption only and later when the quality is already good, they will produce them on a commercial scale.

3. Fifty percent of the graduates of the auto-mechanic course were given a Trade Testing Examination last June. Some of them have landed an on-the-job training in various auto repair shops through the recommendation of the ALOP staff. Their performance is also being monitored by the staff.

4. The ANTEP Regional Coordinator, Melfe Gallego, visited the Salaysay Women’s group last August 28,1992.

B) Community Organizing and Results:

1. The ISFl assisted group of Salaysay Women has organized themselves into an association which is tentatively named: Salaysay Women’s Association (SWA). They have elected their leaders and have already initiated some social and economic activities in the barangay. Membership has grown to 19 women.

2. A cooperative was organized with an ad-hoc set of core group last Aug. 15. To date, two meetings have been conducted. Membership has reached to 20 women. This group is being monitored by BITC.

3. The ALOP assisted out-of-school youth were not yet so keen about organizing themselves as they were still occupied with their on-the-job training.

C) Staff Meetings and Planning

Meetings among cell coordinators were done last Aug. 19 and Sept. 2,1992. The meetings served as the venue for updating and sharing of experiences and whereabouts of the projects assisted by the three cells. Included in the discussion were results of the intervention, problems encountered and their solutions, possible areas of coordination, linkage building and planning for the next quarter of project implementation.

In the planning session, the cell coordinators discussed strategies on how to go about accomplishing the expected outputs of the project.

Results/ Outputs

Objective 1: six trainings were conducted for a total of 77 participants;

Objective 2: two groups were organized and one group staff showed a potential to be organized.

Objective 3: three groups were developed m terms of  capability to eventually access credit facilities tor
their project;

Objective 4: ANTEP assisted COPE-Davao Project has gained six months in experience in the project and has documented it for future use by ANTEP.

Others: two progress reports with picture documentation.

Problems Encountered and Actions Taken

1. ALOP had a problem on materials for the OSY training. It could not provide all the materials needed for the actual workshop because the fund allotment is so small to buy the major parts of the machineries. Some of the materials had to be provided by the participants themselves. Despite these constraints, all throughout the training period, everything went smoothly.

2. BITC recognized the need for a community organizer to respond to the various needs for technical, consultancy and other needs. BITC had to tap a community organizer from another organization to assist in post-training activities for the third quarter.

3. The distance to Salaysay posed a problem to ISFI which invited the resource persons. What ISFI did was to conduct the training in Lumondao which is more accessible to transportation but the invited resource persons did not show up, so ISFI staff had to act as resource persons themselves and so the training was pushed through.

Insight and Remarks

1. Inputs on Community Empowerment in the Visionary Seminar got the strongest reaction and most of the questions from the participants.

2. Positive traits were usually: honesty, sincerity, loyalty, loving, caring, generosity, readiness to serve, accepts feedback, well-disciplined. A seminar for GKK church workers was requested from COPE-Davao.

3. Male participation was proposed and the continuing education program and gender sensitive activities will be scheduled.

4. Micro-enterprises in far-flung areas need to be related to the capabilities of the implementors / beneficiaries / project holders and support systems like facilities, infrastructures, marketing and financing.

5. Micro-enterprise development in the countryside is very important if we are to push for real rural development.

Third Quarter, Sept. 16 – Dec. 31,1992

The project has already attained its momentum which ALOP, BITC, and ISFI, COPE-Davao implementors tried to continue through the following activities:

– conduct of trainings
– monitoring of training learnings/re-entry plans
– organizing activities
– linkage building
– product marketing and marketing materials development
– pilot testing of livelihood projects
– picture documentation

Some changes occurred in the process of implementing the
project, these were necessary in order to get quality and quantity
results.

Activities and Results

1. In addition to the six trainings conducted during the first and second quarters of project implementation, three more trainings were conducted, two of which were formal ones while the other one was conducted on a one-on-one approach or consultancy service type.

The three trainings are as follows:

1. Cooperative Development Seminar, facilitated by BITC last December 16,1992 at the St. Peter’s  College of Toril.

2. Auto-Mechanic Training, facilitated by ALOP which started in Nov. 11, 1992 at the ALOP training center. The training is still  on-going.

3. Diagnosing the health of the enterprise (consultancy sessions), facilitated by ISFl with Davao Handicraft and Marilao Bag Making Projects. This was done last Nov. 5, 6 & 7, 1992. After each         training, the participants were monitored to find out how the training were applied by the participants in their individual or group. The impact of the training assistance was monitored             and evaluated. It was however, too early to gauge the extent of help the training has provided to the participants.

2. ALOP had difficulty organizing the graduates of the auto-mechanic training due to the nature of their jobs. Some of them have proceeded to auto-mechanic upgrading skills training, others were already working in small industrial establishments while some went to work outside Davao City. As a result, ALOP concentrated in training while the organizing of one more group was facilitated by ISFl. There are now three organized groups of women under the COPE- Davao Project. These are the following:

a. Women’s Cooperative of Toril
b. Salaysay Women’s Association
c. Likhang Dabaw

The members of the Women’s Cooperative of Torll were engaged in food processing and vending activities, specifically: variety store, guava jelly/ vinegar/ papaya pickle, ice candy, sampaloc candy, hog raising, soy sauce. Four of these six enterprises were provided financial assistance of P2,000.00 each.

The Women’s Cooperative has been linked with PECTOFOUND (People’s Economic Council, Toril Foundation) and has been prioritized by PECTOFOUND in its lending project. It was considered by PECTOFOUND for a P60,000.00 loan. This was brought about by the pilot-tested livelihood projects with
which the cooperative (through BlTC’s prodding) engaged.

Regular meetings were also held to strengthen the women’s cooperative. In Nov. 29 and Dec. 6, the cooperative met to discuss matters and activities pertaining to the organization.

The Salaysay Women’s Association members were onto backyard goat-raising through the seed fund assistance of ISFI. Their p’ n was to allow all members to enjoy the benefit of raising goats for additional income through capital build-up scheme. After the first four beneficiaries have fully paid the goats, the payment will be used for purchasing additional stocks, to be distributed to other members of the association. The association also planned to toyo and soap making as their income generating project in January.

Likhang Dabaw is a core group of handicraft entrepreneurs in Davao which ISFI assisted in marketing their products through selling missions, display center, developing of marketing materials
(brochures/hand-outs), product promotion and linkage building.  Some of the members have availed of credit assistance from ISFI and other NGOs but still needed marketing assistance.

So far, the assistance provided to the group were: display of their products at ISFI, selling missions in Davao, Cebu and Manila during trainings attended by ISFI staff. Information materials were also being developed to provide further inputs to the different entrepreneurs of Likhang Dabaw. The group is still relatively new but results were already positively coming out like increase in sales, additional market outlets, etc.

By means of the training and organizing activities, the three organizations were linked to possible credit sources: The Women’s Cooperative was linked with PECTOFOUND and was being considered for funding in the amount of P60,000.00. The Salaysay Women’s Association will also benefit from the incoming assistance of CEBEMO for Salaysay. The Likhang Dabaw individual members were already linked to DTI, Sikap Foundation and other formal lending institutions for their additional capital requirement. Marketwise, the marketing assistance has paved the way towards Likhang Dabaw products to be known to Tulay sa Pag-unlad, PHILSSA, Institute of Primary Health Care, PBSP, Social Development Volunteers, SBI and a lot more NGOs, GOs which were reached through the selling missions.

The ANTEP assisted COPE-Davao Project has already served as a showcase project to some NGOs inDavao but not with ANTEP assisted institutions. DAP sa Dabaw, OWWA-DOLE and PBSP have exposed their training participants to COPE-Davao assisted entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs had to chance to interact with the training participants and share their experience with them.

Meetings among cell coordinators were held last October 15, November 23 and December 17, 1992. These meetings provided a venue for updating the individual coordinators on the status of the projects and group assisted projects. There are also times when sharing of experiences were done in an informal manner.

The overall project coordinator also made monitoring visits to respective cells to interact with the cell members. During the meeting with cell members/ beneficiaries some needs were expressed regarding continuation of the project for another year as they have not yet made their organization strong as to be independent from the assistance of BITC, ALOP and ISFI.

Photo documentation was also done to add to the documents and files of COPE-Davao project.

Problems Encountered and Actions Taken/Insights

1. There was a problem of organizing the graduates of ALOP’s auto-mechanic training because of their pressing need for more learnings and earnings. What COPE-Davao did was to replace the youth organizations with another women organization. The skills training activity continues at A LOP but the organizing aspect was deleted from their concerns and was taken over by ISFI. The scheme yielded positive result as the group now presently assisted in the marketing of their products are now entrepreneurs with on-going enterprise activities.

2. The target client — the poorest of the poor families is a difficult but challenging sector. The strategies must vary by family hence, flexibility is needed at most times.

3. Schedules of meeting with the cell members/beneficiaries were difficult because of the tight schedule of the entrepreneurs. The market vendors were also not available during the day. The most successful attendance at meeting were those held on Sunday evenings.

4. The major selection criteria was limited to women’s desire and need for continuing education. No one has been scheduled so far.

Plans for the Next Quarter:

1. Registration of the Women’s Cooperative of Toril with the Cooperatives Development Authority.

2. Installation of a Food Retailing Business at Toril Public Market managed by the Women’s Cooperative of Toril for Feb. to March 1993 funded from post training funds.

3. Submission of a proposal to ANTEP for COPE-Davao Phase

4. Selling missions for Likhang Dabaw by ISFI staffers: Villa Victoria (Davao) – Jan. 21 & 22 (PDS4 Evaluation) Cebu-Jan 25 – 26 (SBI Director’s meeting) MTRC pavao) – Jan. 26 – 31 (Process Documentation trng.) Cagayan – Jan. 27 – 29 (SJSA meeting) Manila – Feb. 10 -12 (PHILSSA trng.) Baguio – March 16,17 & 18 (Financial Mgt. trng. for SEED)

5. Distribution of marketing materials to Likhang Dabaw members

6. Monitoring of all COPE-Davao projects

7. Salaysay Women’s Association marketing and purchasing of additional goat stocks for batch 2; Production of soap for marketing locally

As a result of the project, the following unanticipated benefits turned out: COPE-Davao BITC cell’s linkage with the People s Economic Council and GTZ became stronger. It was through for Women Entrepreneurs came into being. BITC planned to go into case writing for Women Entrepreneur. BITC also has a significant learning from the COPE-Davao Project that is: continuing education for women also means family empowerment through couple involvement. As in the case of ALOP, another COPE-Davao cell, the project paved the way towards more collaborative effort with the National Manpower and Youth Council. ALOP makes use of government resources, match this with NGO capability and thus produce a good product: skilled out-of-school youth. As for ISFI, the COPE-Davao Project provided a very good venue for training and consultancy in the business sector, the professional way. With the consultancy and training provided, it not only harnesses the skill of the staff and resource persons involved but it also opened new opportunities and greater profits for the different enterprises assisted.

The COPE-Davao project has indeed provided the women assistance in the aspects of education, social and economic. On the education side, the trainings enabled the women to gain knowledge and skills in their income generating projects . It may not be covering one hundred percent information as they also  have stock knowledge but the inputs provided to them are things they can make use of at present or in the near future. On the social aspect, since the project also is concerned about organizing, it has also paved the way towards closer relationship among women in the community. It has made them work towards a common goal of improving their lives and become economically productive. The project in this line, became a venue for unity, sharing a common vision. On the economic angle, while there were income generating projects, the women were able to start new livelihood projects, improve existing ones and develop their capability in accessing resources from the outside.

Summary of Results

> Opportunity opened to expose the students in Entrepreneurship to the COPE-Davao clients.

> Linkages inside and outside the university were built.

> COPE-Davao Project compliments well with the 3 cell’s
ongoing projects.

> COPE-Davao Project is grateful to ANTEP for believing and supporting the non-formal education that is badly needed and still lacking in this country.

> Micro-enterprises in far-flung areas need to be related with the capabilities of the implementors and beneficiaries alike.

> Micro-enterprises development in the countryside is very important if we are to push for real rural development.

> Participatory approach to organizing will get people to be more responsible and be capable.

> Training supported with other assistance packages will create
more impact than if it is provided all by itself.