End of year Update

Supporting families, creating futures, building resilient communities.

Report from the chair, Rendt Gorter, Lagawe, 21 December 2014.

It is a year ago now that we reformed the Trust originally founded by my father Kayes (using the Anglophone spelling he used here) and fellow residents from Lagawe, under the new name of ‘Ifugao Community Support Trust’. We defined our aim as community development and our focus would be on families, by supporting livelihoods and education.

To get established, gain experience and build a track record, we had set ourselves three goals for this year: 1. To start a women’s livelihood group raising pigs at my father’s farm, 2. To support one youth from the Barangay of Burnay, the district where we are based, into higher education working with an overseas sponsor, and 3. To make the guest house serviceable again to accommodate supporters. These we have achieved.

The Trustees divided the supervision of the projects between each other, we now have good financial systems in place and two staff from my father’s time in regular employment who have shown responsibility for the security and maintenance of the property. We are now ready for the next phase which during the coming year will prepare for expanding educational support and starting a self-supporting social enterprise by 2016.

The Burnay Women’s Livelihood Project: Supporting families

By the end of 2014, the Burnay pig growers’ collective has raised 6 piglets. In August the six week old piglets were bought for 2,500 peso each (~70 NZD) with money given by supporters from New Zealand. I have been paying for feed since then, and by now they are eating about $60-100 per week of the pre-mix feeds normally used here: Hog Starter, Hog Grower, Hog Finisher and Lactating Sow Feed.

To start with, the neglected stables needed to be refurbished for use again and several working bees with the help of husbands and other family members completed this.

When the stables were first constructed, Kayes had a thriving pig farm, with effluent management and organic inputs that in its heyday was visited by agricultural students from the nearby polytechnic. Designing and building stabling for stock had been my father’s trade many years ago so he took his drawings to local steel workers and built custom designed pig pens for sows and piglets that made feeding and cleaning easy. At the time he wrote and published a booklet entitled “Organic Farming in Ifugao”. His former partner and farm manager Lolita Addagna – they had separated a year before his death – now leads the women’s cooperative and brings along her lifelong 7experience from raising pigs as well as from working with Kayes.

Today saw a new addition to the stables with a mother pig inseminated about a month ago, bought for 20,000 pesos (~600 NZD) using the $450 donated by supporters in New Zealand. A pig has a gestation period of about 4 months and piglets are weaned at about 6 weeks.

After another month of fattening, the six piglets will be ready for sale for around 20,000 pesos each, depending on their actual live weight and market rates at the time. Profits from the sale of piglets will go to buy another bunch of piglets, plus another mother sow. By the time two mother pigs farrow in the middle of 2015, the second lot of piglets will be sold to finance feed of the next generation and for a first pay out to the group members. After that, the pig project should be mostly self-supporting and the women will need to fulfil their side of the bargain and begin to repay our Trust in live piglets.

The aim for 2015 is to develop this project, together with raising chicken, ducks, Tilapia and compost making into a showcase for how impoverished rural families can grow their livelihoods, and to be ready for the Trust to launch a full scale social enterprise buying and selling members produce, offering profits to members and investors. For Trustee and former deputy mayor Nora Luglug who works with the members, achieving self-reliance is a critical goal for these families.

Educational support: Creating futures

The challenge for youth from rural backgrounds, particularly those from broken families, is to gain entry into professional careers that can support families of their own and so escape the hand-to-mouth existence of casual labour. Especially those children coming from landless or impoverished families have little chance to find an open door.

All of our Trustees themselves are already engaged in sponsoring or have taken into their home secondary students from remote villages or poorer families to help with their education.

Connie Lacadin, the Trust’s treasurer, is herself human resource development officer at the Lagawe municipality and has clear ideas for building pathways into future careers. She designed the ICST Educational Assistance Program (EAP) with the Specific Objectives to 1. Provide specific educational cash assistance to poor but deserving students; and 2. To assist parents of beneficiaries with guiding, mentoring, counselling selected beneficiaries who would like to pursue a career through education. The policy clearly outlines the enrolment procedure and conditions to maintain support, as well as the respective obligations of the student, the parent or parents, and the ICST, including the expectation that professionally employed graduates would eventually pay back the costs of education advanced by the Trust for the benefit of future students.

To begin with, the ICST Educational Assistance Program would be offered to one of the children of an indigent, poor family in Burnay, Lagawe. One young woman from Burnay was thus selected and found a sponsor in New Zealand. In cooperation with the children’s home in Solano founded by the American Kay Davidson where the 19-year old had been in residence since her early years, she has now taken up board in Santiago and begun college studies in Social Welfare. With the support of the Lagawe officers of the Department of Social Welfare, the woman and her mother entered into an agreement with the Trust and thus were assisted to start on this path.

In 2015, and if new sponsors can be found to support college and boarding costs of at least 15,000 pesos per half-year semester (~500NZD), more students will be enrolled.

The Guesthouse: The Gorter Mountain Retreat

When Kayes Gorter first started pacing out the 7 bedroom house on the hill overlooking Burnay Valley, he had a vision for a home for abandoned children, a guesthouse for their overseas sponsors, and to help finance that endeavour, by opening a ‘Mountain Retreat’ for visiting hikers and nature lovers venturing into this iconic region of the Philippines. That idea lives on and the guesthouse is now ready to accommodate both supporters and tourists whose contribution will go towards the maintenance costs of the farm.

Critical repairs to the roof, foundations and termite-damaged flooring were completed this year. Visitors are now welcome, says Trustee Ben Buyawe, who recently returned home to retire from a life time career in the United States, and who will be welcoming the guests.

Capacity Development: Empowering community initiatives

The communities of the Ifugao can look back on a long history of working together to live of the land and solve shared problems. In modern times this can be seen in the number of community-based groups and local NGOs as well as local government programmes that promote working together. The work of the Trust, no little thanks to the professional and personal involvement of its Trustees, is an integral part of such community wide efforts. In 2015, the Trust aims to contribute to the capacity development of civil society with training and access to resources for colleagues from other organisations. I will draw on my work in consulting in New Zealand and overseas work experience in development and aid, and recruit further assistance where possible, to organise training and professional support in areas such as Project identification and design, Grant application writing, Project administration and management, Human resource management and development, and Project evaluation and reporting.

Looking forward: Aims for 2015

With the pilot projects nearing completion, the Trust is now ready to launch into next phase, which includes legal incorporation, building showcase projects at the farm and preparing for the launch of a commercial social enterprise in Burnay which over time can demonstrate how working together can be profitable for all involved, attracting investors keen to invest in social good. With that, we have especially corporate sponsors and expatriate workers from Ifugao in mind.

This is a critical phase for the Trust. All too often good ideas lose momentum after the initial startup. By now I have exhausted my credit line with the bank and so we are appealing to our friends to widen interest in the project and recruit further supporters to help us find the resources to keep growing this grass roots initiative. Even if it is just a like on Facebook, your support is appreciated.