Helping Others Through NGO

I had been working in the Municipality where I live as the Municipal Agriculturist for quite some times. Yet, I never had the feeling of fulfilment when I get involved with some activities organizing people and training them to become capable of running their own organizations in the form of associations or cooperatives. I was so fortunate that the lord has made me an instrument to become a catalyst of change in the countryside. With the help of Belgian Non-Government Organization (NGO) named DISOP which is based in Tacloban City, we were able to organized an NGO of our own named Calubian Livelihood Assistance for Development, Inc (CLAD, Inc.) based in the Municipality of Calubian, in the province of Leyte. Our program was conceptualized to help the then newly organized Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) in our Fatima Parish.

Initially, at the start of the project which was last 2005, the group targeted five communities to become project beneficiaries. We were able to convert these five BECs from the following barangays into cooperatives, namely; Brgy Nipa BEC into Nipa-Calubian Credit Cooperative, Brgy Ul-og BEC into Sr. San Roque Credit Cooperative, Brgy F. E. Marcos BEC into Katilingbanon Multi-purpose Cooperative, Brgy Villanueva BEC into Villanueva Credit Cooperative and Sitio Kabicolan BEC into Kabicolan Credit Cooperative.

In our Phase I of project implementation (2005-2007), we were so happy that we were able to extent even in a very little thing that we can such as helping our very needy neighbors by providing small capital to finance their selected enterprises. We were able also to mobilize funds own by the members of the different cooperatives to augment their capitalization. In the phase I alone we had generated savings in the form of Capital Build-Up (CBU) of the members which was more or less one million pesos. Now, we are currently implementing the phase II of the project (2008-2010) and added another four different organizations covering the whole south district of the Municipality of Calubian. As of this writing, the total generated CBU for the nine organizations being assisted by CLAD/DISOP had reached a 2 million mark. Thanks for DISOP Philippines for providing us the needed funds to help the marginal farmers and fisherfolk in the municipality.