No gain, no pain!
This is the battle cry of the Project Development Officers who wish to achieve their goals in organizing beneficiaries for Self Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran Associations.
The Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) of the DSWD FO2 had reached the remotest barangay of the Municipality of San Mariano, Isabela, one of the Set 1 areas of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. This is the barangay of DICAMAY. It is 60 kilometers away from its town proper, a 6-hour trip.
Fearless, we went there. Highly motivated and brave enough to face whatever challenges that will come along the way. Just to recall, the municipality of San Mariano has the most number of Insurgency cases in Region 02 and, inspite of the dangers and risks inherent of its geographical location and the insurgency cases being one of the problems faced by the people and the field officers visiting the area, it is a mountainous first class municipality of Isabela, covering 90 percent of its mountainous barangays.
Given these risks, the PDOs of the Livelihood Program conquered their fears in traversing these mountainous, agricultural and forested areas, totaling 36 barangays including Dicamay, the remotest among them. We visited it during the cold weather of December, 2012.
There was no available 6X6 truck at that time, so we boarded an ordinary bus via Cauayan City. True enough, at around 7PM, we were stranded on our way due to the sticky, muddy, clay-type road. According to my seatmate, a Pantawid beneficiary, there was a heavy rain the previous night. It was good to know that the bus drivers, conductors and the male passengers helped each other by putting a thick rope in front of the bus and patiently pulled-up the bus. We, along with all the other passengers had to walk for 30 minutes to reach a safe part of the road.
The whole trip was through a muddy mountain, with its rough roads if there is any, that causes the “ups and downs” of the trip. Going up was indescribable. It was like a roller-coaster. And surprisingly, we thought the hues changed into three colors from then on: something white when we look at the sky above, something green because of the forest we were passing through and something brown because of the sticky roads of the farmlands we pass by. It was dark when we arrived at the barangay proper at 9:30 PM. Immediately, we proceeded to the house of the barangay captain for courtesy Call.
The next day, when we reached the Barangay Hall, the Pantawid beneficiaries were already there and gave us a very warm welcome. This showed their willingness and interest to join the Livelihood program that will soon improve their lives.
We conducted Community Driven Enterprise Development (CDED) Training and Self-Employment Assistance Kaunlaran (SEA-K) Training to 152 Pantawid beneficiaries. The participants actively listened and participated during the sessions. There were so much queries during the discussion and that was a good gesture because it showed their interest to the program.
Successfully, we were able to organized 4 SKAs namely: Southern Hills (20 members), Green Harvest (15), Kingsville (28) and Highlander (25) with a total of 88 beneficiaries. Most of them will invest into corn production since most of the beneficiaries are farmers; they said this will relieve them from the burdens of the high interest rates (20-25% per cropping) that they are paying to the Financer/traders.
This visit has proven our commitment to the agency where we belong and to the community that we serve. And the realization that through God, the Creator, we can reach the beneficiaries, whatever it takes! It also proved that no matter how difficult things are, if you do your best, God will do the rest.
The actors who went to this area were Ms. Katylin A. Cauilan and Mr. Jerome Verzosa, Project Development Officers of the SLP Unit, through the full support of its Unit Head, Ms. Nena T. Mayo, PDO-III. ###By: Katylin A. Cauilan, PDO II, San Mariano, Isabela
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