TESDA Tarlac Lends Support to Empowering Women through Sustainable Agriculture
BAMBAN, Tarlac – TESDA Tarlac Provincial Director (PD) Elizabeth DM. Manio graced the launching of Pista sa Nayon 2019 at Brgy. Anupul, Bamban, Tarlac on 29 April 2019.
The project aims to emancipate and empower women through entrepreneurship and sustainable agriculture by mentoring them in creating a supply chain of farm to table organic produce.
Organic farm owners and restaurateurs located at Bamban and surrounding towns sought to encourage women to enter into a business partnership with farm owners, restaurateurs, and health food manufacturers and suppliers to grow organic vegetables which will become the basis of the farm to table sustainable lifestyle currently in vogue in major cities of the world.
During her interview over PTV 4, PD Liza expounded on the role of TESDA in promoting skills training with integrated entrepreneurship component as an ideal way of promoting social mobility for the women of the Indigenous People (IP) communities of Bamban and surrounding towns who were the primary beneficiaries of the project.
Philippine Commission on Women Commissioner for Health and Science Sandy Sanchez-Montano, the guest of honor and one of the main organizers of the project, exhorted women to embrace a sustainable lifestyle ensuring their health and well-being as the stepping stone to their quest for emancipation from poverty and financial empowerment through Agri-business.
The push for a healthy lifestyle and sustainable agriculture was pervasive through out the program as speaker after speaker advocated for a healthy diet and patronage of member businesses to stimulate agricultural production among IP women.
TESDA Region III Director Dante J. Navarro, recalled how a constant diet of fresh vegetables in his youth sustained him through the rigors of his climb up the corporate ladder enabling him to maintain a schedule that is the envy of younger executives even today. Before she left, PD Liza committed to re-invigorate the drive to get the IP women out of their kitchens and highland communities and into the business world through free technical vocational training as a stepping stone to the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education thence emancipation from all forms of oppression.
