MINUTES OF THE MEETING – July 8, 2005

Venue: Bond office, 22 matiyaga cor. Mapagbigay st. Diliman, Q.C.

 

 

Attendance :        POMCAT         - Jed Guinto

                             SALIS              - Cecile C.Sipin, Lana Decena

                           Tommuanan     -  Evit Sumosot

                            LARIDE           -  Vic Manoto, Tino Dasmariñas

                            CABIOKID       -  Sammy Nicolas, Lito Agustin

                            PGX                  -  Vim Rusmiminda

                             Payoga            -  Julie Flores

                             Bond Belgium  -  Francis Layssens

 

Presiding Officer: Bert Peeters

 

AGENDA :   1. Introduction/Agenda Setting

                    2.  Updates from Partners

                    3.  Info from Bond-Belgium

                    4. Projects and activities

                             - GROS visit

                             - Millennium goals

                             - Nana Azon’s proposal

                             - volunteers

                    5. Bond Phil admin/logistics

                             - First Anniversary

                             - Website

                             - Appointment letter/SEC

                             - membership rules/conditions

 6. Finances – dues, account, project proposal

 

PROCEEDINGS:

1. The meeting  started  at 10:30 am with  the usual preliminaries and

     introduction of participants.

 

2.  Representatives of the  7 partners  reported developments  in their

     respective organizations

 

2.1           PAYOGA

Ø     Organization’s objective is to create job opportunities for the laborers and provide additional income to farmers

 

Ø     The organization employs 70 contractual laborers at the moment and they are being paid  depending on their production; salary is  output based. The advantage of this kind of arrangement is that it requires less supervision of workers. The supervisor simply monitors quality of their output.

Ø     They are selling organic fertilizer named “Green Friend Fertilizer”, which uses biotechnology.

Ø     They presently produce 30,000 bags of organic fertilizer but are still short of the target  : 70,000 bags production is the goal

Ø     They also engage their workers on handicraft like bamboo- furniture making

Ø     Payoga has facilitated a  Zero Waste Management program in the community, which highlights  use of  recycled materials

Ø     Main problem : Demand is high  but supply is inadequate, there is an urgent need to raise capital.

 

2.2           CABIOKID

Ø     Main concern is the further development of the Farm and Permaculture site

Ø     Continuous expansion of site for wildlife and got a boost with the acquisition recently of additional  1 hectare of land

Ø     Second week of July- Municipality of Isabela will visit Cabiokid

Ø     Brgys Punit & Lucban  in the said municipality are possible places to develop a likewise permaculture site

Ø     helps in planning & permaculture design in Bicol , Libon  with LGU

Ø     supports in upgrading building design skills at Saragpunta project in Palawan

Ø     conductud a training on  Waste management in Cabiao last June 28-July 1 for a group of urban poor settlers

Ø     They are presently hiring new staff and are first opening up this opportunity with the BOND network

Ø     Problem :  low level of education of staff. They are now participating in NFE training program

  

2.3           PGX

Ø     facilitates study tours for people from other countries, basically exposures on Philippine realities

Ø     links up community based producers- helps small and micro producers in marketing their products

Ø     provides updates on  situations for partners abroad thru e-mail

Ø     is a partner of Volens and 11.11.11

Ø     a resource office

Ø     tries to be financially- self reliant

Ø     interested in Bond and to meet people

Ø     for the next 6 months they will facilitate a youth exchange program with a longterm-partner (since 1985)

Ø     they will have also visitors from East Timor, who will first stay in Manila and then move to  Mindanao.

Ø     Japanese students will come to research on juvenile delinquency in our country

Ø     A German visitor will  research on one of the Japanese projects. They will be sent to Navotas

 

2.4           LARIDE

Ø     Focuses  on contractual laborers issues and concerns, example  SSS benefits

Ø     main concern now is providing livelihood activities for members.

Ø     Oct or Nov- they will invite leaders of SSS and Gov’t officials to discuss issues and problems of contractual laborers

Ø     They have a special project in Antipolo where they have currently 5 major concerns:

a.     education- improve a Day Care School located at Vic’s lot which has been operating for  5 years. With 100 pesos tuition fee a month, parents can now afford to pay as compared to the previous arrangement of traveling to their old school  with 450 pesos transportation expense. They area also building a library which they name Sitio Library. Funds for the library came from GMA 7 of City Service.  They were given 400 books, 2 computers, 2 tables and 12 chairs.

b.    Bio intensive gardening – this project did not prosper because of inadequate supply of water in the area.

c.     Livelihood activities – they have lots of training in livelihood  skills like mushroom production and herbal medicines but they lack capital to sustain the project.

d.    Health – they applied for an  assistance of 20,000 pesos from Medical Action group but this was not approved because they could not put up a medicine store/botica,, one of the requirements to avail of the assistance.

e.    Labor- there are organizations who promised to give work to our contractual laborers like the H. Martin Foundation otherwise, job opportunities are rare.

 

2.5           SALIS

Ø     a private school that has been operating for 15 years from the initial 20 students in 1991 to the present 600 enrollees.

Ø     most children, about  70% came from OCW families.

Ø     parents recognized the quality of education offered by the school to the graduates from high school; out of 16 who took the test passed the UP exams.

Ø     The school has been given  subsidy by  the Department of Education

Ø     Taking care of the environment is the one major concern of the school, with its school’s theme  “thinking about global issues as we act on them locally”

Ø     The school believes  that to develop people means  not only to train them but to expose them to Phil. realities that is why the school is involved in various outreach programs, for instance it has been asked to manage a school in NAIC 

Ø     The municipal development council (GROS) of Beveren in Belgium provided funds to a partner community in NAIC to help set up a furniture business as one of the potential livelihood programs.

Ø     Other activities involve teachers to  assist in development trainings in Early Childhood Care and  Development

 

2.6           TOMMUANAN

Ø     their office is located in Kidapawan, North Cotabato

Ø     members recently attended permaculture training  in Cabiokid and  in Kidapawan.

Ø     demo farm of permaculture is located in Balindog ,it has 2 fish ponds

Ø     they are also collecting seeds of fruit trees for sale and for  distribution in the community

Ø     GMO start to spread in their area and this is the cause of concern among members.

 

2.7           VOLENS

-         Tries to induce cooperativism and volunteerism on both sides od the globe (Belgium, Philippines)

-         focus : exposurists come to Philippines to offer services at their own expense

-         Facilitation of groups and foreign visitors

 

2.8           PPA (Philippine Permaculture association)

- absent

 

 

3. Info from Bond Belgium

The first organizational meeting of Bond Belgium was October , 2004. Francis, Tina, Roger and Mieke among others were present. A core group plans to meet every two months. They will again meet  on Sept. for a workgroup. Presently , they are deliberating if Bond-Belgium will be a independent NGO or linked up to Volens. The organization is not financially secure and is still looking for possible fund sources. They are also convincing other organizations to give more help. They are looking for local partners in Belgium to become members. Francis expressed that he came to help and to look for support to the BOND members, but made it clear that none of us can rely on BOND alone. BOND Belgium will also make a study to see if they can start a bigger project with partners in Belgium and the Philippines.

 

4. PROJECT AND ACTIVITIES

 

Ø     Millenium goals – c/o Bert who will provide articles and clippings on the subject. Please find document on millennium goals attached to this mail

Ø     We would like to hear from success stories among BOND partners that relate to the Millennium goals. Get your stories ready, while Volens works out this cooperation among other Belgian Funding agencies in the Philippines

Ø     Municipality of Nijlen, Belgium – Pomcat Exchange. 

-Students and volunteers  forom Niljen  will stay for 2 weeks in Labo & Basud to  make an oven, set up a  water wheel and interact with students in the local shools.

-Nijlen committed for three years to work together with Pomcat

Ø     Permaculture course manual would be finished by September

Ø     GROS of the municipality of Beveren, Belgium plans to go to the Phils by 2006 for three weeks. This is part of their program for the South . GROS is the unit for development concerns in every Belgian municipality. The proposed travel plan made by Mieke has been shared and Volens and PGX show interest to facilitate their coming.

Ø     Volunteers. Volens is willing to facilitate short time voluntarism with BOND partners in the Philippines. Any Belgian can apply to do volunteer work in the South maximum one person per BOND partner per year. People of 20 yrs and above are considered. Proposed Manila based projects NAIC, Cabiokid, Payoga, Pomcat and  Saragpunta

Ø     Nana Azon ‘s project on Medicinal Herbs Production and Processing has been approved for funding of up to Php 20,000 by the BOND partners.

 

 

5. Bond Phils. Admin/Logistics

  

 The following has been agreed upon by participants to this meeting:

Ø     First Anniversary celebration will be held at Payoga, Aug. 20-21

-Schedule : Aug. 19 p.m.- evening departure from  Manila, Aug. 21-evening trip back to  Manila

    -The detailed schedule/agenda  of the event will be prepared

by Bert and Cecile and sent one week in advance of the meeting. Contact the BOND email for details and address these to Lana Decena

- We hope all partners will be represented and those who are attending should submit their  

        names earlier.

Ø     Make new banner (tarpaulin) since the old one was brought and shared with BOND-Belgium

Ø     Website – Jed will consult the person who made their Website

Ø     Secretary Certificate – Ms. Cecil will make the format and

Send it to other partners. Submission will be on Aug 21.

Ø     Membership rules/conditions for New Organization – to be prepared by Vic & Tino and draft to be presented on Aug 21.

Ø     Finances

Salis and Laride will give 1% to Bond as part of their share for the money they received from GRO’s and

 

 

Please be informed that BOND is also looking for a new secretariat support since Lana will give up that position. We would like to hear suggestions from the members.

 

If there are any BOND recommended agri persons willing to apply with Cabiokid they can do so by sending their CV to [email protected]

 

 

 

 

Documentors:

 

Cecile Sipin

Lana Decena