Improving lives, strengthening faith

Inspiring stories of ECLOF Philippines' clients

By Maurice Malanes

 

Small businesswoman Estrella Baliang has reasons to be ecstatic. After nine cycles of small loans from the Benguet branch of ECLOF Philippines, the woman’s business of buying and selling socks, jackets and other clothes has grown. This enterprise has not only brought rice and fish on to the Baliang family table, it has also sent the children to school. In fact, the eldest has just graduated from a criminology course.

“I thank our Lord Jesus Christ for giving us ECLOF because without it my family would not be where we are now”, Mrs Baliang testified during an ECLOF clients’ assembly on 25 April in La Trinidad, the capital town of Benguet Province in northern Philippines. She was among a number of ECLOF clients who received awards during the assembly for their excellent repayment rates.

A special award for best performing client went to strawberry farmer Peter Dao-ines. He and four other colleagues are now in their third year of acquiring ECLOF loans, which they have used to pay the rental of the land where they cultivate strawberries. The group rents the land from Benguet State University, which owns a big slice of La Trinidad valley.

The English-speaking farmer says that the ECLOF loans he and his colleagues received have not only improved their lives but have strengthened their faith as well. “Through the loans, we were not only able to pay our land rentals and improve our business; we were also able to pay our tithes in our church”, he says. “So, I also thank the Lord for ECLOF.”

Growing and selling
Strawberry growers make up 80% of all the farmer-clients of the ECLOF Philippines’ Benguet branch. With its fertile valley, hilly slopes and cool mountain climate, La Trinidad town has been teeming with the strawberries that Catholic missionaries first introduced in the early 1900s. The town is now the Philippines’ undisputed strawberry capital.

The major market for fresh strawberries is neighbouring Baguio City, the Philippines’ summer capital to which lowland tourists take a break when the summer heat gets unbearable in Manila and other parts of the lowlands. Baguio City is also a favourite destination during Christmas and Lent.

The throngs of people who flock to Baguio are the lifeblood of both small and big business there. However, something happened towards the end of 2004 that sent all businesses, big and small, crashing down. This was an exaggerated report about a supposed outbreak of meningococcemia, a deadly strain of meningitis.

As a result, very few people came to Baguio City during the Christmas break in 2004 or the Lenten season of 2005. The economic impact was devastating as there were no customers to buy strawberries and other local products. Many strawberry farmers had to ask ECLOF for a postponement of their loan repayments.

However, the strawberry farmers never gave up. They continued planting, ever hopeful that the meningococcemia scare would fade away and business would again flourish. In addition, instead of relying on sales of fresh fruit, farmers made their strawberries into jam, candies (sweets) and wine. At that time, ECLOF Philippines began its Strawberry Farm Loan Programme, of which many strawberry farmers took advantage in order to help them resuscitate a battered industry.

In 2005, strawberry farm loans made up 30% of all the more than PHP13 million (US$241,000) the Benguet branch extended to clients. This new loan programme was the branch’s second biggest, next to its small business loans, which made up 63% of total loans. The other loan programmes are the TODA (Transport Operators' and Drivers' Association) loan programme, which shares 4% of the total loan pie, and, at 3%, cut flower farming loans.

Peter Dao-ines (right) receives his award for best performing client from the president of ECLOF Philippines, Dorothy Cajayon. Mr Dao-ines is the only male client of the ECLOF Benguet branch.

When the bottom dropped out of the fresh strawberry market, ECLOF clients turned their crops into wine, sweets and jam.

Flowers
Producing cut flowers is another major source of livelihood for many people, most of them women, in La Trinidad and communities around Baguio City. Many of these women have found out about the low interest small loans that are available from ECLOF.

“We used to borrow from private money lenders who would charge us usurious interest but we are now grateful for having found ECLOF,” says Gloria Pagoy, a flower grower in Ambiong village, also in La Trinidad town. She adds, “With ECLOF's reasonable interest rates, we at least recover oBefore she discovered ECLOF, Gloria Pagoy had four greenhouses for cut flowers that she had built over a number of years. With the loans she obtained from ECLOF, Mrs Pagoy was immediately able to build another greenhouse. “Since ECLOF is a good financing arm, I would always tell members of my group to stay credible and be prompt in repaying our loans”, says Gloria Pagoy, whose group also received an award during the Benguet branch’s assembly.ur investments and even get modest earnings.”

Mrs Pagoy appreciates the capacity building training that ECLOF offers from time to time. She cites the training on how to manage business and basic cash recording and another on Christian leadership and stewardship. “These trainings are not given when you borrow from a bank or from a private money lender.”

Knitwear
Enterprising Sylvia Yampan, a mother of five, is certainly doing her country, which has a 12 percent unemployment rate, a favour. Through her home-based knitting industry, she was eventually able to hire six knitters who help her produce sweaters, shawls, Bob Marley caps, and other knitwear for men and women.

Sylvia Yampan’s success, however, did not come easily. Ever since her husband, who was a miner, was made redundant in 1993, the burden of helping feed the family has fallen on her. On her own initiative, Mrs Yampan went to see how sweaters were knitted in a neighbour's house. Just by observing and learning designs from magazine catalogues, she then began her own knitting industry, which now provides a livelihood for her whole family.

However, like other businesses in Baguio City, Sylvia Yampan’s knitting industry suffered a beating in 2004 during the meningococcemia scare. “There was a time when our wholesale buyers were no longer buying our products, so I was forced to sell my products on the side walks even if this meant playing hide-and-seek with the police because this (selling on the street) was illegal”, she says. “The police even penalised me one time by making me clean the streets for a day. But I continued to sell my goods because I had a family to feed and children to send to school.”

Once visitors and tourists returned to Baguio, Mrs Yampan was able to stop her street selling activities. With two colleagues, and to help her business recover, she borrowed the equivalent of just over US$1,000 from ECLOF. “By God’s grace, our business gradually picked up and my colleagues and I were able to pay our first loans so we could borrow again”, she says.

Mrs Yampan now has a regular outlet at the Baguio City public market. She also displays and sells her products during trade fairs. Like other ECLOF clients, this woman is happy to say that, courtesy partly of ECLOF, she and her husband, who now operates a taxi and two passenger jeeps, were able to fund two of their five children through graduation in college; one of them is a teacher, and the other a nurse. Two other children are still at college, and the youngest is in high school.

Like other ECLOF clients, Sylvia Yampan has a deep faith in God and she also considers her success in business as a story of faith. “God has been good and always will be”, she says.

For these people, ECLOF is an important solidarity partner in the fight against poverty. As part of their thanksgiving, the clients, during their general assembly, danced a traditional sadong and tayaw to the tune and beat of gongs and drums. Visiting staff from ECLOF International and other ECLOF national officers and staff, led by international director Muhungi Kanyoro, joined the Benguet women and men in their dance.

ECLOF Uganda national programme manager Naate Herbert Masangazira (left), ECLOF Philippines client Gloria Pagoy (centre), Jérôme Clark, executive director of ECLOF Ivory Coast (far back right), and others invite members of the ECLOF Philippines clients’ assembly to join in a thanksgiving dance.

Sylvia Yampan made such a success of her knitting business that she was able to provide jobs for six other people.