The contract

The women turned up early, so they joined Rodelyn and Lolita who were preparing the food for our shared dinner. Lolita had chosen four friends – “not good to have too many!” she had explained to me earlier. Beatrice Tayaban, Aniseta Pagal, Mary Ballabong, Grace Fontainillo and Lolita Adagna were the names later signed on the Animal Sponsorship Contract (Swine).

Connie and I had been late to the trustee meeting, trying to get the agreement and project plan finalized and then find somewhere to print it. It was Saturday and that was market day in Lagawe, so all the central roads were blocked with stalls and tents. In the end we split up, and I found an internet café with a printer while Connie took the Styrofoam cooler to the ice shop. We were still well within “Filipono time’ and only Ben was already waiting for us when we arrived at the guest house in Burnay. But we were closely followed by another trustee, Jovencio Dipia-o. He was late because since he was also a trustee of the Lagawe organic coffee growers coop, I had asked him to organise 20 kilograms of roasted plunger coffee packets which I could take back to New Zealand the following day and try to sell as a fundraiser.

When Nora arrived we started the trustee meeting since we wanted to hear first about the preparations for the livelihood project. Nora had been talking with the group to discuss the project and to also get to know them a little better. “They each have between 3 and 7 children and one is a grandmother. And one of them has a deaf-mute child for whom they have not been able to find any schooling.”

Nora had found out that the women were experienced with raising pigs and chicken, but only Lolita had been involved in the kind of larger scale project we were starting and they were very excited about that. “They live hand to mouth and are never able to save enough to build up livestock and to generate regular income.” Lolita was just about to slaughter the 7 pigs she had reared for the wedding of her daughter that was coming up the next week. That had only been possible thanks to her adult children contributing money. But after that she would be back at zero.

The aim of the livelihood project was to sustain income by returning part of the profits from livestock sale directly to feed the next round of piglets, produced by breeding sows kept in the same stable. The women knew that they could keep growing pigs once we had kickstarted the project with purchased piglets and feed for two breeding rounds. We would just have to find financial supporters that would put in the NZD 300 per pig needed for the first year. After that, the women expected to be raising at least 20 pigs per year with the money they themselves would earn.  

At the same time, probably twice as many piglets could be produced. The agreement with our Ifugao Community Support Trust stipulated that half of these, but not more than the twenty they would receive during the first year, would be returned to the Trust every year, in compensation for both the use of the piggery we were providing and the funds raised for the initial investment. Those pigs would then provide stock to extend the program elsewhere in Ifugao Provinces, which was the plan for 2015 onwards.

Before signing the agreement, Nora and Connie sat down once more with the women and went through the fine print, paragraph by paragraph. The contract was in English which is the official language in the Philippines, so Nora carefully explained each clause in the Ifugao that the women spoke at home.

Then all of us went up to the stables and discussed the repair work that the women would do, or that they would get their husbands to do, before the project could be started. And since there was space to start other projects later, we looked around and talked about raising chicken, growing vegetable and cropping mushrooms, using composted pig manure as fertilizer. It was exciting talking about what could happen here and we continued planning over the dinner that was waiting for us below at the guest house.

The Burnay Women's Livelihood Coop

A neighbour's pig pen

Lolita didn’t need convincing. She had been raising pigs all her life and she didn’t need me to repeat the calculation of costs to know that, if done properly, the potential income is double the investment. But would she be able to convince the other women she had started talking to? 

Nora, who was trustee and our community development volunteer, offered to come along and meet the women. As Carmen, our adviser from the Department of Social Welfare and Development had instructed us, just listen to the women, find out what they want to do, and help them achieve that. Nora, herself a former deputy mayor of the provincial capital Lagawe, now retired and grandmother, would explain that the women could divide their income between themselves and would only have to set aside enough for the next round of breeding. If the trust would buy them a dozen or so 45-day piglets once, and one more time after 6 months, then that would set them up to become self-funding thereafter. 

Lolita, Robert and Nora discuss the project.

“And what about the money you will lend us for feeding the piglets – don’t you want that back?” We explained that while we wanted to re-invest in other groups elsewhere in Ifugao, we simply wanted the women from Burnay to pay us back with ten piglets twice a year. These we could then either pass on to new groups or cash in at the local market. While the trust would manage their cash, with a separate bank account, how the money should be divided would be essentially their decision. We just wanted to extend the scheme further once it had proven itself and been fine tuned.

Robert inspects the piggery

The stables adjacent to the guest house would need only a little work to be able to accommodate multiple batches of pigs for fattening as well as a couple of breeding sows. We had invited Robert, our resident carpenter, along for the inspection. He kicked the posts holding up the piggery, and warned us that some repairs would be needed. No worry, laughed Lolita, that is what we have our men for.

As we parted, I said to Lolita ‘Simply tell the other women that we will find you money to pay for the first year, provide the stables and help you solve problems along the way. And then you just have to help us help other women. You can’t really lose.’

Return to Ifugao

The air-conditioning was already blowing cold air while the bus passengers were stowing their belongings in the overhead racks. After the humid heat still lingering at 10 pm in downtown Manila, I realised that I would need to put on some warm clothes for the overnight trip to Lagawe. My reserved seat was occupied, but to my surprise it turned out to be Lucia. A neighbour in Burnay Valley and wife of the maintenance man at the guesthouse, she was welcome company for the 8 hour journey into the mountains, so I slipped into the aisle seat next to her without protest. I was expected and Robert had a number of issues waiting for me to be sorted out, I was told immediately.

End of the road at Bunog

I was last in Ifugao Province over Christmas. The guesthouse my father had built from local timbers on the slopes overlooking Burnay Valley was one of the largest houses in the area. The 7 bed-room residence was located at the far end of Bunug village, a small settlement of perhaps 10 houses and itself at the end of a small one lane road. Robert was employed for 10 or more hours a week to look after the property, together with Rodelyn who was the resident housekeeper.

While the house has 4WD access, many if not most homes in the valley can only be reached on foot, 5 to 30 minutes along rice paddies or forest tracks from the nearest roadhead. In fact, there are only 3 cars in the district of perhaps a thousand inhabitants, and our trust owns one of them.

To hear news from the trust, my first stop after the bus arrived in the town centre of Lagawe was the home of Connie and Mel. It was still early, not even 6 AM yet, and after saying goodbye to Lucia, I walked through the market street were shops were just beginning to open. When I arrived, coffee was percolating and breakfast was soon on the table, with rice and fried foods being the standard Filipino morning fare.

Connie is the Trust Treasurer and we quickly caught up on news from the guesthouse, and then exchanged family news. I had just missed my brother Tim by a day when I visited his family at home in Singapore during the 12 hour stopover, but they were happy to look at some photos from his visit to Great Barrier Island with his two young daughters the week before.

With Tim and the trustees my father had brought together, we had decided to keep the project alive after my father’s unexpected death last year. Kayes had first come here a decade earlier to visit a child he had been sponsoring, decided to stay and then had always sought other ways to be a helpful community member.

During my last visit in December, we had agreed to model the future work of this trust on that of the Aotea Family Support Group Trust whom I worked with in New Zealand. The charity would also be a trustee and volunteer led organisation helping communities in Ifugao Province to develop strengths and support vulnerable people. To make that possible, we wanted to find local and foreign supporters that wanted to become part of the ‘Ifugao Support Group’, using the guesthouse as our local base.

After breakfast I started up our car and drove it into the hills above the township to Bunug village. From there it was a quick walk across rice fields to get to the guesthouse and I was pleased to finally arrive, after travelling for five days since setting out from Great Barrier Island.

The "Ifugao Community Support Trust"

In December 2013 I visited Ifugao, three months after my father deceased in the Philippines. I guess I wanted to find a way to build a positive legacy for Kayes, together with the community among which he had lived for the last decade of his life.
When Tim and I had brought his ashes back to the mountains for a farewell ceremony in October, a 150 people turned up to pay their respects in the house that he had built in Burnay Valley. The trustees that had supported Kayes in his attempts to help abandoned children - the reason that had brought him to the Philippines originally - approached us then with the hope to continue that work.
I am a community development worker, and to me children in need are a symptom of crippled communities.
When we sat down together in December, it was easy to agree that community development in Ifugao was called for. In the few days there I saw much evidence of a community already hard at work to help itself.
An organisation that could play an meaningful role in that would be a community-based support trust not unlike the one I am working for in New Zealand, the Aotea Family Support Group Charitable Trust. Even though I had worked for 10 years in international aid, the Great Barrier Island grass-roots group offered the best inspiration. Guided by volunteer trustees already active in different parts of the community, the Ifugao Support Trust also aims to assist the most needy - foremost children and elderly - as part of a resilient and thriving community, by working on community development.
And so we renamed the "Gorter Children Trust Fund" to the "Ifugao Community Support Trust."
Now I am packing to return to the Philippines again, to see if the 'Gorter Guest House' will be ready for volunteers to come for working holidays. I will again write about this visit here.
The older posts below were my observations and reflections from the December visit.