Strawberry Fest bore fruit

WE WERE all smiles in the city of smiles that night. During the 13th Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines – Department of Tourism (ATOP-DOT) Convention and Pearl Awards night, which was held last week in Cagayan de Oro City, La Trinidad’s Strawberry Festival 2017 was awarded with a Special Citation as one of the Best Tourism Events (Municipal level) in the whole country. This is despite its first time to respond to the association’s call.

The annual Pearl Awards, which is being organized by ATOP in coordination with the Department of Tourism, is the only national-level tourism awards activity in the country. The event intends to recognize the tourism best practices of Local Government Units and tourism-related establishments. This year, more than a hundred LGUs participated in the screening process for various tourism projects, programs, and activities. La Trinidad’s Strawberry Festival, the lone representative from the Cordillera Region, was chosen as one of the top finalists for the best tourism events category, and eventually recognized during the Pearl Awards night.

The 2017th edition of the La Trinidad’s Strawberry Festival interestingly bore the theme: “Sustaining the fruits of La Trinidad’s Agro-eco tourism” – a well-timed message for the La Trinidad community to adopt a tourism-conscious approach in sustaining agricultural gains, and environmentally sound advocacies. Last year’s Strawberry Festival also revived the baking of a giant strawberry cake as a tribute to the town’s Guinness world record feat in 2004, and maintained innovative events such as the “non-motorized” float parades, “multicultural” community gathering, and the colorful mix of agriculture, culture, and future. It was definitely one for the books – indeed, as recognized by the

ICOULD not resist repeating here the image of an elder that formed in my mind’s eye while we were on our way to Oring, Banengbeng, Sablan, Benguet, last week.

At the top of a mountain pass, above Bineng, La Trinidad, I was thinking about the Honorable Pedro Mayam-o, Governor of Ifugao, who went to Ucab, Itogon, Benguet with a heavy heart while volunteers and government forces raced against time digging on the eroded soil that buried a mining community in the area at the height of the onslaught of super typhoon Ompong.

I was informed Governor Mayam-o stayed in Ucab for almost a week. Most of the missing and those recovered, thus far, are from Ifugao Province. Interviewed by the local media, he verbalized what was quite obvious. He was sad that his province mates who came here to earn a living or additional income, were dead and missing.

The Ibaloi community of Oring is just in the neighborhood, nestled deep in the mountains of Banengbeng, Sablan, Benguet.

Not until the Second Cordillera Highland Agricultural Resources Management Project (CHARMP2) rehabilitated their farm-to-market road that now serves as their main access road to the outside world, the community of Oring was hardly heard and accessible by car during the rainy season.

When I first visited Oring some seven years ago, I was told by the local folks that they can only earn cash by waking up early and hike the steep slopes up to the mountain and then down towards La Trinidad carrying their farm products on their backs to sell. Otherwise, they plant only what they can consume.

That reality, highlight for us the difficulties of life our brothers and sisters face up to every day in our mountain communities. It explains why our people, like those from Ifugao, flock to the mining areas where they could earn a steady source of income for their families.

The challenge of rural and agricultural development is to make these marginal communities, many are not heard, seen, and visited regularly, to be more productive, and resilient.

Government and private development agencies may have visited these places once in a while to extend some form of services. They bring essential goods and services, no doubt. But to really make a difference in the lives of the local folks, longer and sustained development, and empowerment projects and activities are what the community really needs to become resilient and able to provide for the basic needs and better living for its people.

In Oring as in several communities in the Cordillera, the CHARMP2 rehabilitated the access roads and footpaths, constructed irrigation and potable water systems, tramlines, storage houses, and business/marketing centers, among others.

Aside from rural infrastructure, the CHARMP2 also supported community initiatives to rehabilitate their watersheds and forests.

An easy access livelihood assistance fund to support community businesses and livelihoods was also made available to the communities in the Cordillera that are under the coverage of the CHARMP2.

The CHARMP2 did not simply package these projects and downloaded it to the communities, under its coverage areas where most of them are receiving these kinds of assistance for the first time.

To ensure a participatory engagement and truly empower the people in developing their communities they were first trained to prepare their community plans that contain the list of priority projects they want to implement under the CHARMP2. Later they nominated some of their members to be trained in monitoring the implementation of their projects.

During the implementation of projects, devel-