In solidarity with the women of the world, AWCF celebrated this year’s “International Women’s Month” by witnessing the accolades given to Filipino women entrepreneurs, and by spearheading the design of a gender equality (GE) training manual intended for co-operatives’ use.
Go Negosyo’s entrepreneurship expo
On March 4, 2011, AWCF Executive Director Ms Salome Ganibe led representatives of the organization in attending the “Third Entrepreneurship Summit and Expo: Babae Kapuso Ka ng Bayan” (Woman, You are One in Heart with the Nation-ed.) of Go Negosyo held at the World Trade Center, Pasay City, Philippines. Organizers of the three-day event that drew more than 25,000 Filipino female and male attendees were the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship’s (PCE) Go Negosyo; GMA Network, a media outfit; and The Philippine STAR, a national newspaper. Go Negosyo (Go Business-ed.) is the advocacy of the PCE, an organization that expresses belief that Filipinos can address poverty in the country by engaging in entrepreneurship and developing an optimistic, passionate, creative and innovative, resourceful, and diligent and persevering character.
The Go Negosyo event recognized and honored 21 women as “2011 Filipino STARpreneurs” who served as role models in their particular fields or entrepreneurship levels: social enterprise or entrepreneurship enabler, small and medium enterprise (SME), and large enterprise. As co-operatives have been considered social enterprises, AWCF took note of the awardees for the social enterprise/entrepreneurship enabler category who were: Ms Vilma Santos-Recto, Governor of Batangas province; Ms Pacita Juan, founder of ECHOstore (ECHO stands for “Environment, Community, Hope Organization”), who promotes social and environmental change in the Philippines through her business; Ms Alegria Limjoco, Chief Executive Officer of Francorp Philippines, which is part of the worldwide network of Francorp International that specializes in franchise development and consulting; and Ms Ruth Callanta, President of Center for Community Transformation (CCT). (Ms Callanta was also the driving force in CCT’s Credit Cooperative, which is the recipient of AWCF’s TrIO [Transformative Individuals and Organizations] Asian Co-op Award 2007 for the organizational category.)
As success stories of these enterprising women were shared, the summit participants were not only challenged but also inspired to strive for excellence in all endeavors they choose, particularly in entrepreneurship. It was emphasized that by engaging in entrepreneurship, women can help improve the family income thereby lending a hand in alleviating poverty in the country, while serving as leaders and role models to others.
Design conference for upcoming GE manual
On March 9-11, 2011 at the Regalia Park Towers in Quezon City, Philippines, AWCF convened 15 gender focal persons (GFPs) from 15 co-ops around the Philippines to help design a training manual that can help promote GE in co-operatives. The 15 co-ops are participants in the “Promoting Gender Equality Among Co-operatives in the Philippines Project” under the “Advancing Civic Capacities for Effective and Sustainable Services to the Poor (ACCESS to the Poor) Programme” (2010-2012), supported by the Swedish Cooperative Centre (SCC), with fund support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). In this design conference for the GE manual, the GFPs shared and exchanged information among themselves their GE training materials and modules, training designs, session designs, and audio-visual presentations (AVPs). AWCF will include these materials of the co-ops in the GE manual that it will develop to hopefully enrich the co-op sector’s resource materials on GE, particularly for the use of GFPs, gender advocates, and trainers.
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