More uplanders to get entrepreneurial training

The Forest Management Bureau and its partners will train more people’s organizations on preparing respective sustainable business and development plans so these groups can become environment and natural resources community-based enterprises that can help reduce poverty in the uplands.
“We want to elevate POs from being merely engaged in subsistence livelihood,” said senior agriculturist Elvira Agpoon from FMB’s Community-Based Forest Management Unit that’s involved in the undertaking.
She noted the country has 1,790 POs nationwide at present and training these to become enterprises will contribute much towards improving rural socio-economic conditions.
For next month, she said FMB is scheduled to hold one such training in Davao City for Mindanao-based POs the agency will select.
FMB will also conduct in January 2013 the same training for selected POs in the Visayas, she noted.
She said FMB conducted the first training in Luzon this year.
Agpoon said private group Non-Timber Forest Products will train the participants using its own modules.
She said the NTFP modules were harmonized with the ENRcommunity-based enterprise development and management guide published by FMB, New Zealand Aid Programme as well as Food and Agriculture Organization.
“We want to help POs develop capability to identify entrepreneurial activities appropriate to their respective settings and which these groups can venture into,” she said.
The PO readiness assessment tool can help such groups do so, she noted.
For the guide’s inputs, Agpoon said authorities concerned used experiences of and lessons learned by POs in eight sites where FMB and its partners piloted the enterprise development training.
The pilot sites and corresponding POs there are Bgy. Laguit Padilla, Bugallon, Pangasinan province (Laguit Padilla Multi-Purpose Cooperative), Bgy. Amulong, Baggao, Cagayan province (Cagayan Valley Resources Developers and Protectors Incorporated);
Bgy. Alangan, Limay, Bataan province (Alangan Farmers Producers Association Incorporated), Bgy. San Isidro, Roxas, Palawan province (San Isidro ISF Farmers Association), Maasin, Iloilo province (Katilingban san Pamuluyo nga Naga-atipan sang Watershed PO Federation); [PNA]