Lost through the din of the fiesta-like atmosphere of the recently concluded 12th National Cooperative Summit held last October 16 – 18 in Waterfront Lahug, Cebu City was the announcement of Cooperative Development Authority OIC Chairman of the Board of Administrators Eulogio T. Castillo that the Philippine cooperative movement will be celebrating its 100th anniversary on February 2015.
Castillo’s announcement was meant to seize on the momentum of the national co-op gathering which drew close to 5,000 delegates from all over the country. Organizers led by the apex body, Philippine Cooperative Center and local coordinators VICTO National and Philippine Cooperative Central Fund Federation barely had time to assess and evaluate the outcome of the summit when the CDA chief made the announcement.
This suggests the cooperative movement would be hitting the ground running when President Benigno S. Aquino III officially proclaims the year-long celebration of the Philippine Cooperative Centennial. I understand P-Noy has the draft of the Executive Order and is poised to sign it ASAP.
If the Chief Executive is keen to give importance to cooperatives, he should sign the EO declaring a day in February 2015 National Cooperative Day without delay and make the red letter-day for PH cooperatives a national non-working holiday.
For one thing, the centennial happens as the global movement prepares to mark the decade of cooperatives come 2020. For another, co-ops have shown its mettle during the twin tragedies that not only wrought sufferings to over a million people as well as heavy damage to agricultural crops and infrastructure in the Visayas, but also to the political stock of the sitting President.
****
I have once pointed out that the business of cooperatives does not generate the kind of excitement that usually comes with big corporate events that feature celebrities and a lot of freebies, but not anymore. For one thing, in the aftermath of typhoon Yolanda, corporate events now give importance and serious study to corporate social responsibility programs (CSRs ) which is basically the domain of co-operatives.
The strategy of surveying ground zero is daunting and corporations have turned to cooperatives because they know and understand the terrain better than their corporate counterparts. In terms of mobilizing people for relief distribution as part of the rescue process and then in participatory strategies to best identify the sustainable solution that will rehabilitate and recover their lives, cooperatives have proven track record.
For example, in the aftermath of the strongest typhoon to hit the planet, the Jollibee Group Foundation, the CSR arm of the Jollibee Group of Companies tapped the Catholic Relief Services to distribute relief goods. In turn, CRS turned to the Lamac Cooperative to distribute thousands of food packs and relief goods using the co-op’s 21 branches spread throughout the provinces of Cebu and Bohol and in some parts of Negros Occidental and Leyte.
The JGF has been helping small farmers improve their living conditions through the Farmers Entrepreneurship Program since 2008. The program uses a strategy developed by the CRS and is endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The financial backing is guaranteed by the National Livelihood and Development Corporation (NLDC). Basically the program links clusters of farmers to the supply chain of institutional markets, for example, the food chain outlet which purchases supplies of rice and vegetables in bulk.
The program looks easy on paper, but according to general manager Ellen Limocon, the challenge is how to deal with the farmers’ lack of trust and confidence in institutional intervention, whether it’s public or private. Long years of state neglect and attitudinal problem that relies heavily on political favors have made farmers live in the fringes of society for decades.
With Lamac MPC working closely with farmers of Sudlon and Cantipla, the farmers learned the cooperative way, i.e., working with others to achieve the common good. Today, they are linked to a big supermarket chain and a five-star hotel which relies on their farm produce to supply customers. They have also learned to save money, and some who have not had a bank account since birth are amazed to see that with just a few kilos of vegetables set aside for their savings, their collective deposit has reached more than 1 million in just 6 months. Lamac MPC’s perseverance also paid off, by way of a new cooperative branch serving the farmers of Cantipla.
Lamac MPC is noteworthy because it is not run by slick corporate-bred executives but by ordinary people who, when the co-op started out in 1973, were even unschooled in cooperative principles. One of the founding members is Ellen Limocon, a barangay health worker who rose to become chairman and general manager of the self-help enterprise.
With other village people like Delfin Tuquib and many others who nurtured the coop, they transformed the lives of thousands, giving them a better life, I think even more than what the local government may have done in a decade. Today it is one of the fastest growing cooperatives with more than 51,000 members being served by 22 branches, and assets valued at more than P900 million.
Lamac is an agricultural cooperative and the agro-enterprise program merely gives the co-op a renewed vigor to animate the sector which was hardest hit by natural calamities.
By the way, I spoke with Ellen and Delfin Tuquib during the taping of Co-op TV, a program produced by CCTN Channel 47. For want of superlatives which have rained on the coop since it won its first award in 1994 and has not ceased to do so until today, I will use the vernacular, “Nahurot akong bilib sa LMPC” (I ran out of praises).