With reports from BENZENT PUMAY-O, QUIOSKY DAWEG and MERING DAZON
www.nordis.net

SAGADA, Mountain Province — The Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resources Management Project 2 (CHARMP 2) started, as scheduled, conducting orientation seminars on their program in 30 Barangays of the Mountain Province. Magi Bacoco, the NGO Supervisor in-charge of ensuring synchronization of schedules , said.

This is facilitated by the Community Mobilization Officers (CMO) of the non government organization that contracted the social mobilization phase of the project. Speakers in these orientation meetings are from the Montanyosa Research And Development Center (MRDC), Office of the Municipal Agriculturist (OMAG), Municipal Engineers Office ( MEO), National Commission on Indigenous People ( NCIP), and Environment and Natural Resources Office (ENRO).

The project, which is supported by a government loan from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Asia Development Bank (AsDB), and the OPEC Fund for International Development; covers Agriculture on food security, Rural Infrastructure Development (RID), Watershed Management and Land Delineation/Land Tenure. The orientation meetings will discuss these programs in the communities where it shall be implemented.

As of this date, only barangay Gueday, Besao was oriented. An initial feedback on the activity was positive as participants pinned hopes that the projects introduced would solve overdue, basic development needs described to be among the factors of poverty in the country.

One participant also noted that their economic development is a basic human and collective right as Indigenous peoples that has to be urgently addressed.

There were participants however who were wary of some programs like the delineation of lands. They see the delineation of lands as a privatization ploy to make it simpler for big mining companies to deal only with private owners and not the whole community that is equally put at the loosing end in large scale mining operations.

After the initial community orientation program, Bacoco said that preparations for a more substantial content for the orientation is underway. People must also understand and be properly informed that the fund for this whole undertaking is a loan.

This loan is supposedly to answer food security, farmers’ infrastructure needs and land tenure.
Therefore, people especially in target areas must actively participate in these orientations and in the whole process of the program from research, planning , implementation and assessments so that these funds to alleviate poverty will really go to who it is intended for – the POOREST of the POOR.# nordis.net