The Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) has completed a Philippine Carabao Center (PCC)-funded project that assisted 17 cooperative-beneficiaries under its enterprise development component.
The project, titled “Building Capacity and Strengthening Partnership for Carabao Development Program (CDP),” was conducted from April 2015 to December 2019.
Of the 17 cooperatives, 13 were in Luzon and four in the Visayas. They were given
equipment, tools, supplies and vehicles needed for their carabao-based enterprises.
Glenn Gregorio, Searca director, turned over the final report to Arnel del Barrio, PCC executive director, during his recent visit to the carabao center in Nueva Ecija with a team that included Searca Deputy Director Joselito Florendo.
Gregorio said the project had three components: knowledge management (KM); capacity building; and enterprise development, which supported PCC in upscaling its implementation of the CDP.
Through the KM component of the project, a KM Strategic Plan for the PCC National Headquarters in Nueva Ecija, regional centers and clienteles was developed, he added.
Under the capacity building component, nine local training and workshops were conducted for PCC officials, regional staff and Carabao-Based Enterprise Development (CBED) partners.
Gregorio said the training and workshops updated the participants’ knowledge on technical writing, reviewing and editing of knowledge products (KPs). It also widened their
knowledge on financial management.
A national conference was held to launch and pre-test selected KPs produced by the project. The International Conference on Knowledge Sharing Forum was also organized to showcase the best practices of small- and medium-scale carabao farmers in Southeast Asia.
“Searca and PCC are looking to continue their partnership through a second phase of the project to attract private investments for the cooperative-beneficiaries, develop carabao-based enterprises through technology innovations, and training of PCC staff to address competency gaps in business advising,” Gregorio said.
During their meeting, Gregorio and Del Barrio agreed to pursue the next phase of the project to focus on farm clusters organization, more outcome-based farm cluster managers training, and strengthened enterprise development in major agriculture corridors in the Philippines.
