Tuesday, November 06, 2007 City gov't names Agdao coop as most outstanding By Grace L. Plata
THE Agdao Multi-Purpose Cooperative bagged this year's Most Outstanding Cooperative Award for the Large Category of the Davao City-sponsored search for Most Outstanding Cooperative.
AMPC received a plaque and P5,000 in cash Monday morning in a short awarding ceremony held in front of City Hall after the flag ceremony.
The large category under which AMPC falls is for cooperatives with total assets of 100 million and above.
According to Julius Adrian Oxales of the City Cooperative Development Office who acted as one of the evaluators/judges, AMDC is not the largest cooperative in the city in terms of assets but what won them the award were AMPC's community development involvement projects - a big percentage of the criteria.
In an interview, AMPC Board Chair Dominador Dizo said their community projects are concentrated on environment, education and livelihood conerns.
Just this October, AMPC signed a memorandum of agreement with the Davao City Water District as it adopted two-hectares in the Talomo-Lipadas Watershed area for the cooperative's reforestation projects.
"We will donate P12,000 a year for tree-planting and maintenance of our adopted site," Hizo said.
He said that the cooperative has already been active in tree planting projects in Malagos in the past years but the board decided to adopt a site this year now that they are more financially capable.
AMPC also offers scholarship grants to qualified children of its members. These are mostly technical-vocation courses that are Tesda-accredited.
"We also have a blood bank for the members. It's stored at the Philippine National Red Cross bank and these are accessible to all members who need it," Hizo said.
AMPC general manager Palmenline Batausa, who was present during the interview, said mortuary and health care benefits are the highest necessity among members.
"These are our most sellable products," she said jokingly in the vernacular.
Each member below 60 years old gets a 20-peso contribution from each of the cooperative's regular members while those above 60 years old will get five-peso contribution each.
AMPC was started by 21 members in 1991. Most of the pioneers were Agdao market vendors. Today, AMPC has 21,010 members and 52 regular employees in its three offices.
Aside from AMPC, El Rio Grande Multi Purpose Cooperative bagged the Most Outstanding Award in the Medium Category while the City Employees of Davao Cooperative won in the Small Category.
Evaluators of the search were representatives from the Cooperative Development Authority, Land Bank of the Philippines, City Cooperative Development Office, and the City Cooperative Development Council.
