CHARMP strengthens 68 farmer-groups in highlands

IN A bid to achieve community empowerment for the 18 expansion barangays, the scaling up of the Second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resource Management Project (CHARMP2 Scale Up) continues to provide strengthening and capability building activities among its assisted and organized peoples organizations (PO).

Through its Social Mobilization and Participatory Investment Planning (SMPIP) component, the project has pipelined activities to be conducted either monthly, quarterly or per semester to further train the POs in becoming more capable and capacitated not only in their chosen development projects but also in terms of their personal growth and development as members of an organization.

During the SMPIP assessment on August 2831, 2018 in Baguio City, the provincial supervisors from the six provinces have presented their accomplishments in line with PO strengthening and community empowerment in general.

These activities include trainings on leadership and capacitation, capability buildings, and organizational management, among others. Other trainings being provided to the farmer-groups were identified by the group themselves based on their training-needs assessment.

Some of these needbased trainings which is under the capability building training category that was already conducted is the Training on Project Proposal and Resolution Making with Networking and Linkaging in three Scale Up communities in Benguet province.

Benguet Provincial Coordination Office provincial supervisor Mary Ann Fianza said

the result of the training was good as reflected in the project proposals and resolutions produced by the farmergroups as their after-activity outputs.

Resource persons for the training were members of the municipal councils.

Moreover, the project through the community-based staff reported that they have initially administered the organizational diagnosis (OD) tools with the various farmer-groups. The tool aimed to access their level in terms of organizational management capability (15%), leadership development capability (20%), project management capability (20%), funds management capability (15%), networking and linkage capability (15%), and good governance (15%).

To date, the OD results are still being validated and analyzed at the provincial coordination offices’ level.

Jornalyn Aglipay, based in Pasil, Kalinga, shared through her facilitation of the OD tool, she became more familiar with the organizations that she is handling.

“I came to know more about their [the POs] strengths and weaknesses, what needs to be improved, and what appropriate approaches or training is needed to further strengthen the POs,” she said.

To date, the community-based staff are focusing on the coaching, mentoring and monitoring of the assisted farmer-groups who have already started the actual implementation of their projects specifically the livelihood interest groups and the agroforestry POs.