Monday, November 26, 2007 Editorials: The power of a dream
THE individual seems puny in the face of poverty.
But just as sticks gathered into a bundle multiply strength, individuals can help each other deal with present deprivations, as well as break poverty’s hold on the future.
This is a valuable lesson culled from several years of governmental and nongovernmental efforts in working with self-help groups to alleviate poverty and sustain development.
Actual, hard-fought victories in the fight against poverty should hearten Filipinos, rocked by the rising cost of living and the heartbreak stories of fellow Filipinos crushed by their struggles.
Too soon after schoolgirl Mariannet Amper was first reported as driven to commit suicide by her family’s financial woes, a Liloan father threatened to drop his two-day-old son. Fisherman Edito Patiño was immediately admitted to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Cen-ter’s psychiatric ward when he yielded. He was unable to pay the hospital bills of his wife, who just delivered by Caesarian section. He also had not eaten for two days before hos-taging his own son.
According to government data cited in Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 22 banner story on the Patiño incident, the poor in Central Visayas rose from 34.4 percent in 1997 to 38.8 percent in 2000. More poor households are still concentrated in the rural areas (50 percent) than in the cities (27 percent).
Woman power
Among the nation’s top microentrepreneurs honored during the recent 2007 Citi Microentrepreneur of the Year Awards (MOTY) is a former tenant who realized that tilling her landlord’s parcel of land will never educate and secure the future of her five children.
Born out of wedlock, Saturnina Diez had been abandoned by her parents when both started other families. Saturnina married young. But rather than bow down to fate, the elementary dropout shouldered her burdens and used her family as inspiration for drawing the utmost from herself.
In the late 1990s, Saturnina and her neighbors in Sibonga linked with the Cebu Micro-Enterprise Development Foundation Inc. (CMEDFI). The micro-finance program of Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. has been assisting women in Visayas to become microentrepreneurs.
According to CMEDFI executive director Ma. Theresa Catipay, Saturnina proved she not only had the mettle to succeed in enterprise, she had the integrity to honor her debts. From an initial loan of P3,000 in 2000, Saturnina is now on her 13th loan. Because of her impressive track record in repayment, CMEDFI released P100,000 to her this year.
These loans became her capital for raising vegetables in the upland sitio of Cansantik in Barangay Bato, Sibonga. Assisted by her husband, Saturnina not only owns the land the couple tills; she has purchased two parcels of land. The produce they deliver to Carbon, Talisay and Lapu-Lapu markets nets, in an average week, P6,000; on peak seasons, their earnings go as high as P12,000 per weekly delivery.
Paying forward
During the fifth MOTY awards, Saturnina was recognized as the Visayas winner in the Masikap category (for asset market values of up to P300,000).
She not only met the stringent financial requirements (100-percent loan repayment, sales turnover and growth in profits), she proved herself to be a socially responsible member of her community.
In her vegetable trading, Saturnina employs 15 of her Sibonga neighbors.
Catipay praises as “very humble” and “hardworking” this CMEDFI client for never missing the regular Wednesday meetings of her group, despite her agricultural and trading work. Two of Saturnina’s children are college graduates; the remaining three are in school but are trained to work beside their parents in tending their produce and livestock.
Saturnina has repeatedly said she has no time for local politics. But she gives seeds and fertilizers to neighbors. She is scrupulous about turning over the full proceeds of their produce, and leaves it to them to decide when to repay her.
“What sets Saturnina apart from others is (her capacity) to dream big,” Catipay attests. Families prosper because one woman dared to believe that her children deserved more than one meal a day.
