Tawi-Tawi folk profit from seaweed farming

MANILA, Philippines – Parents in the small town of Bannaran in Tawi-Tawi are able to send their children to school from earnings derived from seaweed farming and fishing.

“The modest income I raised from planting seaweeds is used for my children’s education,” Mohammad Haraji, a member of the Bannaran Community High School Parents-Teachers-Community Association (PTCA) and a seaweed farmer, said in the local dialect.

Tawi-Tawi in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) is the poorest province in the Philippines, according to the 2006 survey of the National Statistics Office.

“Seaweed earnings have also assisted teachers doing volunteer work at Bannaran Community High School,” Macapagal Ismael, the school principal said.

The Bannaran community is assisted by member-companies of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) as part of their commitment to reduce poverty in the country. Last year, PBSP members and partners spent P62 million to fund projects that increase the income of the poor, provide them access to basic services, and protect the environment. This strategy is known as the Area Resource Management, an integrated development approach which ensures project sustainability.

“We saw the potential of seaweeds in alleviating poverty in the area. We introduced seaweed farming technologies in partnership with the Mindanao State University-Tawi-Tawi College of Technology and Oceanography (MSU-TCTO),” explained Marylin Muncada, PBSP’s regional director for Mindanao operations.

To diversify from fishing to seaweed farming, “a P10,000 initial capital is a good start. The farmer can already expand his seaweed farm after 45 days, and meet the family’s basic needs,” Ismael added.

“PBSP assisted the community by providing initial farm inputs, a farm house, and a seaweed drying facility. This requires capital….so we partnered with Consuelo Foundation. We also need a strong local group in the area which will see the project through successful implementation and sustainability. That’s Muslim Upliftment Foundation in Tawi-Tawi, Inc. (MUFTI),” Muncada added.

PBSP also involved the Bannaran community’s PTCA by building parents and teachers’ capacity to undertake small livelihood projects. “We need to address the problem of poverty in more ways than one,” said Muncada. “The reality is that about 12.7 percent of Tawi-Tawi’s high school students drop out because of poverty, so MSU and PBSP also introduced the students to seaweed production techniques,” Muncada added.

“The seas were also destroyed due to illegal fishing. We helped them by introducing the concept of sustainable development and trained them on appropriate marine technologies,” Muncada reported.

In 2008, some 470 Bantay Dagat members, themselves fisherfolk from the towns of Bannaran and nearby Mantabuan, patrol the fishing ground and sanctuaries. The monitoring report of MUFTI to PBSP shows that illegal fishing has been eliminated.