SM Foundation helps promote productive lives for Pinoy minorities

SM Foundation, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of conglomerate SM Group, has been implementing pro­grams not only to improve the lives of Filipino minorities and the marginalized but to integrate them into society, as well.

Henry Sy Sr., SM Group founder, conceptualized in 2006 a scheme that would teach sustainable agriculture and food security to farmers and others who are in great need.

In Bamban, Tarlac, SM Foundation partnered with May Farm agri-tourism resort and farm school, which has been training Aeta minorities to integrate modern farming technology with their tradi­tional methods.

May Farm helped the Aetas set up a cooperative to market their products. The foundation, through its Kaba­likat sa Kabuhayan (KSK) pro­gram provided the training for the Aeta farmers.

May Farm also provid­ed the school for children of the Aeta tribe in a tie-up with Brightwood School in Ange­les, Pampanga, which is also owned by the same Yap fami­ly running May Farm.

Two idealistic members of the family, Maria Agnes Con­chiel Yap-Marcon and Ana Maria Yap Zubiri, take care of the day-to-day operations in the idyllic farm, which also offers spiritual renewal aside from the farming school.

A member of the Aeta tribe, Casun Garcia, said the mem­bers of the community learned a lot of new skills through the program; a total of 118 tribesmen graduated from a 12-week lecture and hand-on application at the demonstration farm in­side the 6.2-hectare May Farm resort.

Participants in the program included residents of Bam­ban and nearby towns who are mostly small-scale farmers, aside from the members of the Aeta community who are res­idents near the resort.

KSK sought to train farmers to have a sustainable farm even in just 100 square meters of land. Only a few of the farm­ers who studied under the KSK program have more than 500 square meters of land.

Cristie Angeles, AVP for Outreach Programs, SM Founda­tion Inc., said KSK aside from the training program also seeks to connect farmers to the market by giving them access to the extensive SM network such as the SM Markets-Supermarket, Hypermarket and Savemore stores.

Angeles said that KSK also seeks to make Filipino mi­norities more confident members of the society by integrating them into the social mainstream.

The Tarlac project was similar to a KSK training program in Davao City last June which graduated 108 minorities who cultivated a demonstration farm in the Manobo Tribe area in Sitio Ladi-an, Barangay Marilog in Davao City.

The demo farm sits on a protected indigenous people’s land where the University of the Philippines-Mindanao con­ducts its environment and social development projects.

The season-long training was held every Tuesdays at the house of Datu Luis Lumbak, the Obo-Manobo tribe leader.

The training benefited members of a large community of the Obo-Manobo tribe, most of whom are also beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) or the conditional cash-transfer program.

Some of the participants are not able to read or write and they related how special it was for them to experience receiv­ing a graduation certificate.

In the Tarlac project, members of the Aeta tribe proudly displays their KSK diplomas and even reserve a special place for these in their humble homes.

Farmers under the KSK training learn to effectively culti­vate different varieties of vegetables such as ampalaya, tal­ong, upo, patola, kalabasa, pepper, cucumber, lettuce, mel­on, watermelons, and other highland crops. Farmers were also taught irrigation techniques and use of a green house for off-season planting.

Datu Lambak said the Obo-Manobo tribe has been tradi­tional farmers for a long time and they are confident with their craft. But he said the changing weather the past few years has made it harder for them to sustain their crops.

During these long periods of layoff from their farming, they were employed as construction workers and in other la­bor-intensive jobs.

KSK started in 2006 as a partnership among Henry Sy, Harbest Agribusiness Corp., the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) local government units (LGUs) and non-governmental organi­zations (NGOs).

It has become one of the pillars of SM Foundation’s cor­porate social responsibility (CSR) program.

Since 2007, the KSK program has produced 15,000 graduates who are small farmers, agribusiness entrepreneurs, and agriculturists in 125 sites all over the country where SM stores are located. LUIS LEONCIO