COCA-COLA Philippines, together with the Tagum City Council of Women Inc. (TWCI) and the Congressional Spouses Foundation Inc. (CSFI), signed a memorandum of understanding Friday, March 10, for the livelihood trainings and seminars to be conducted for the wives of servicemen.
Vice President for Public Affairs and Communication of Coca-Cola Philippines Adel Tamano said their 5 by 20 Sari-Sari Store Training and Access to Resources (Star) program has two tiers. The first one is with wives of servicemen as the beneficiaries while the second tier is intended for women who are not wives of servicemen and yet are interested to participate in the program.
“We intend to start a pilot project here in Davao City particularly with the Task Force Davao’s spouses. Yesterday we had a briefing with them and they already have some ideas on how they will start up the business. With the proper training from Coke Philippines, this will be very much successful,” said CSFI President Emily Alvarez.
She said they chose spouses of the Task Force Davao as their primary beneficiaries of the program because their foundation understands the risk the husbands in the army had to go through. Their foundation does the profiling and monitoring of the applicants.
The Star program in Davao Region started with TWCI in 2014 under Alma Uy, the wife of former Tagum Mayor Rey Uy.
“We started in 2014 with 1,000 sari-sari store and carinderia owners. It was in partnership with Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda). By the next year, in 2015 we already had about 1,200 women participants. We no longer partnered with Tesda by that time. The funds were directly coming from Coca Philippines and our foundation,” said Uy.
She added even before Coca-Cola Philippines assisted them three years ago, TWCI has already been doing livelihood projects to help the women of Tagum City particularly through a centralized carinderia where the members leave at least two types of viands for the day and come back by the afternoon for their sales.
Through this, the women are still able to take care of the house and their children. Uy said they now have 40 to 60 variants of viands catering to around 18 outlets in Tagum City including in the malls.
Uy said they had partnered with the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department of Labor and Employment to ensure good marketing of their products as well as the food safety.
Included in the Star program module are the livelihood trainings, connecting participants with micro-finance lending institutions with minimal interest to help them start with their business, and even talks on gender and sensitivity.
The program also teaches the participants for strategy to help address their concern on “pautang” which is said to be the major problem of sari-sari store owners.
Gilda Custodia Maquilan, 5 by 20 Star chairperson, said they conducted baseline studies to determine the different needs of the women in the different communities that they help.
Mass gathering of beneficiaries in Usep
A total of 5,000 sari-sari store owners and carinderia owners from Tagum City, Davao del Norte, and Davao City had gathered at the University of Southeastern Philippines Friday for a day of learning and entertainment still in connection of Women’s Month celebration. Around 2,000 of these are from Tagum City.
For this year, Coca-Cola Philippines targets 40,000 Star scholarships for the entire country. One of the objectives of the gathering is also to launch Pasco, the organization of women micro-retailers in the country.
This was also conducted to celebrate the contribution of these women to the region’s economy.
This event is a joint effort of Coca-Cola Philippines, Tesda, Philippine Commission on Women, TCWI, and the local government of Davao City.
“We are going to do this program in Davao City as a pilot (project) and as you can see our Star program has mutated to address different social needs and concerns of women. We have programs for OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers), we have programs specifically for retailers. This program now is custom-made for wives of servicemen. We will tailor-fit our program depending on the needs of the women in the community,” said Tamano emphasizing that the program’s main objective is to awaken the entrepreneurial spirit of the women and not to give them an amount of money or to ask them to sell Coke products.
