Giving village women a fighting chance to overcome poverty and hunger, UNMDG 1

Against the backdrop of beautiful Mayon Volcano is Ligao in the southern Luzon province of Albay, about 20,000 farm families subsist on an area of 250 square kilometers where coconut is the dominant cash crop followed by rice and corn. Some root crops like cassava and sweet potatoes, vegetables, peanuts, bananas and ginger are also grown. Ligao is a poverty stricken agricultural area typical in numerous provinces of the Philippines. What is worst is that it is at the mercy of the annual destructive typhoons and frequent agitations of Mayon Volcano.

Barangay Guilid, the village of sadness

A typical family in Barangay Guilid in Ligao is that of Nelia and Rene with their three young children. The public school is two kilometers from their house. Their only source of income is growing rice in their one-hectare farm. They could only harvest 3,000 kilos of palay per year. Of this, 73 percent was sold, 15 percent kept for their own consumption since 12 percent went for labor in planting, weeding and harvesting.

Transporting their produce to the market was difficult and costly, specially in the rainy season as there was no farm to market road. They had to travel by carabao or walk two hours to the nearest bus or jeepney stop.

The family’s yearly gross income growing rice was about P33,000 ($2 a day gross and $1 a day net), barely enough for their needs. Thus, to make ends meet, expenses were often paid in kind and usually borrowed from the middleman, often the rice miller who bought their crop. This put many farming families in the Philippines in an endless cycle of poverty, making them truly subsistence farmers.

A day in the rural family’s life centers around the farm work and water collection for domestic use. Nelia and her children would spend at least six hours daily collecting water from the river half a kilometer from their home. They did this early in the morning and in the afternoon. Two of her children help their mother collect water. Most of the children in Barangay Guilid do not attend school because they have to help their families on the farm or with the domestic chores.

The value of potable water in increasing school participation rate

Of the total school going population of 28,000 in 2007 (the start of the InfRES project intervention), only 25,250 four to 14 years old children attended preschool and elementary school resulting in a participation rate of about 88 percent. Twenty-eight percent does not attend school because they have to help their families with farm work and household chores affecting the literacy rate and earning potential of the region specially among women.

To safeguard the health of her family, Nelia had to boil the water from the river for drinking. Water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, acute gastroenteritis, typhoid fever and amoebiasis are endemic. These largely preventable diseases are caused by contaminated water, lack of potable water, poor health and sanitation practices and limited access to health services.

Rene, as a member of the Water User Association (WUA) had certain priority in receiving water, but because of high water loses in the earthen canals, water was often short. Consequently, Rene could only plant rice once a year and no other crops during the dry season. He also used part of his harvest for seed, reducing yields year by year. The common varieties needed less water but also yielded less and fetched lower market prices.

The intervention of InfRES

Robert de Kruyff, team leader and project management specialist of the Infrastructure for Rural Productivity Enhancement Sector (InfRES) Project, noted with interest my columns on the Millennium Development Goals and gender issues in the Philippine STAR. “These ideas caught our attention as it is very much in line with one of InfRES’ goals and objectives.”

“The InfRES project is a project implemented by the Department of Agriculture through 779 municipalities in 41 provinces in Southern Luzon, Bicol, Eastern Visayas and the whole of Mindanao, regions with high agricultural potential but ironically also high poverty incidence. The $150-million project is loan-financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with counterpart funding by the Government of the Philippines, LGUs and beneficiaries. The project aims to reduce poverty through construction of basic infrastructure (farm-to-market roads, irrigation and potable water) systems in poor rural areas with high agricultural potential.”

The Project recently released a publication entitled Empowering Women through Rural Infrastructure: a Driver for Change to document the benefits of rural infrastructure, particularly those impacting on rural women. The Ligao InfRES Subproject Indicator shows the big difference between the 2007 Baseline data and the Post Project data.

The local government unit (LGU) of Ligao, through the InfRES Project, removed constraints to improving agricultural productivity of families like Nelia and Rene’s by building farm to market roads (FMR), resulting in higher incomes.

From one crop yield earning of P33,000, the farm family income jumped to P93,500 annually with two crops per year.

Travel time from farm to market shortened the usual two to three hours to only 30 – 45 minutes. Both improvements now allow time for people to be more involved in community activities.

Households with access to clean water like Barangay Allang registered none in 2007 but by 2009 130 households had clean water. Barangay Paulba had already 300 households with clean water but this increased further to 650 households by 2009. Incidence of water borne diseases from both barangays used to be 30 cases of diarrhea but this has decreased to only 10.

Consequently, all these factors contributed to the increase in school enrollment from 25,250 pupils to more than 30,042 pupils.

Women now account for 20-30 percent of total agricultural wage employment

The UN Country Report 2010 foresees that the Philippines may not be able to meet UNMDG 2 - the achievement of quality primary education and UNMDG 4 and 5 – lowering infant and maternal mortality rate.

Nelia’s daughter now has the opportunity to go to school because of the family’s better income and less demanding domestic chores and farm work. The women of Ligao, likewise, have more time to earn money like growing vegetables and root crops in their backyard and raising poultry and hogs and engage in non-farm work like basket weaving, dressmaking, baking. Nelia is now assistant treasurer of the Barangay Water and Sanitation Association (BAWASA). Even the school participation rate climbed to 108 percent showing that the number of enrollees exceed that of the school going population indicating that many children (older than 14 years) are no longer burdened by domestic and farm work, can attend school.

Nelia has time to join social network. Community health seminars enable her to educate her children on reproduction and health. This impacts significantly – lowering child and maternal mortality rates (MDG 4 and 5).

Can P-Noy make UNMDG 2015 sustainable beyond his 2016 term?

In a country that is so grant-dependent, the national projects end when the foreign or local grants end. Can President Benigno Aquino III make a difference by making sure projects would sustain themselves beyond his presidency? The BUDGET OF P 1.3 TRILLION has been allocated to the President’s men, the Cabinet secretaries, to follow the UNMDG National Plan of Action mandated by the United Nations. There are only four years left to reverse our failure to eradicate ignorance and poverty and the prevalent high incidence of infant and maternal mortality. As soon as P-Noy leaves in 2016 another president and new set of Cabinet will take over and disregard his achievements instead of sustaining them. Then the country starts again from zero - 70 percent Filipinos remain poor and the Philippines humiliated among the progressive ASEAN countries.

The InfRES model projects must be sustained and replicated. This is your chance Mr. President to be MR. SUSTAINABLE and reverse our spiraling social and economic regression.