SOCIAL ENTERPRISE Sister Guadalupe Bautista (top) says Mountain Maid Training Center’s fresh ube (purple yam) and strawberries are sourced from local farmers who have become its partners in bringing quality food products to its loyal patrons, many of them tourists who don’t mind the queue at Good Shepherd convent on Gibraltar Road in Baguio City. Sales have helped send the training center’s young workers, seen here with Sister Guadalupe, to school. —Photos by Neil Clark Ongchangco
BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — It seems the holiday crowd in Baguio City cannot have enough of Mountain Maid Training Center’s products, particularly its ube or purple yam jam, that each customer who queues up outside its Gibraltar Road store is allotted only two bottles to purchase.
So hot a commodity has the jam, made by the student workers under the Religious of the Good Shepherd, become that resellers have devised underhanded ways to get around the two-bottle-only rule.
Sometimes, entire family members, neighbors, friends line up to avail themselves of two bottles each, later to be resold at higher prices in other parts of the city or even of the country. Or they’d dress up like out-of-towners complete with a small dog tucked in a shoulder bag. Sister Guadalupe Bautista, manager of the Good Shepherd business, has just about seen it all.
The demand is such that well-meaning community members, including Mayor Benjamin Magalong, have suggested to her to increase and return to prepandemic production, hire additional staff, help more students go to college, make more money, franchise, export, have another store or sell online.
The kitchen can process only 20 tons of ube in a month, down from 50 tons before the pandemic. And yet these don’t seem enough to meet the demand worsened by the problem of the resellers. Sister Guadalupe says, “Before and after the pandemic, the challenge was supply could not cope with the demand of ube jam and strawberry jam, our bestsellers. Our philosophy is, we sell only what we are able to produce. We do not want to be slaves of the market.”
She ticks off other reasons the social enterprise cannot go larger in scale:
- “We are not a typical food factory that operates 24/7 primarily for profit. It is a social enterprise engaged in the food business. As such, those who benefit the most are the stakeholders: the student-workers, farmers and staff. If it is for profit only, the studies of the students will suffer, the sisters will not have time to pray, the full-time staff will be overstretched.
- “We are okay that Mountain Maid Training and Development Foundation Inc. is no longer on the list of the top 10 taxpayers of Baguio. As a small social enterprise, we still remit monthly to the Bureau of Internal Revenue 12 percent VAT, pay quarterly and annual taxes.
- “The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) policies are different for small-scale enterprises, for medium and large-scale enterprises. We meet the rules and regulations of small enterprise, meaning, we have less then 100 workers, students and full-time staff.
- “To expand means hiring in-house licensed mechanical engineer, doctor, dentist, nurse. As a small-scale enterprise, we have memorandum of agreement with consultants and medical personnel.
- “Instead of expanding, we encourage other businessmen and women to use our social enterprise model: put people first, share the benefits of their business with their workers. Some of our benefits are interest-free housing for full-time staff; free over-the-counter medicines; free morning and afternoon snacks; subsidized lunch (P5 rice and viand); educational loans; educational assistance; P12,000 cash assistance on the death of an immediate family member; cash gifts twice a year; birthday gifts; Christmas gifts; accident insurance besides what is required by law like Social Security System, PhilHealth, Pag-Ibig, 13th-month pay, holiday pay; free scholarships for staff who want to take master’s degree; values formation and other growth activities during paid time; free use of sports facilities; and special meals on feast days and anniversaries.”
Farmers as partners
Sister Guadalupe has always considered it the height of irony that farmers, the producers of food, are among the neediest people who cannot even afford to send their children to school. She says, “We consider the farmers who grow ube and strawberry as ‘partners in mission as they supply the center with the raw materials used in production. As a social enterprise, they are stakeholders and ought to benefit like the student workers who work and study. We use fair trade practices in dealing with the farmers in the food chain. They are assured of a steady market for their products. The prices of ube and strawberry are fixed. That is mutually beneficial.”
These ube farmers are now part of associations in the provinces of Ilocos Sur, Benguet and La Union. How has this changed their lives? Sister Guadalupe recalls a GMA TV anchor who asked the same question. The answer given by a farmer was this: “Since we partnered with Mountain Maid, we are able to send our children to school, live in decent houses, provide food on the table, even purchase secondhand vehicles for our farm use.”
The center’s social worker took years to organize 38 registered associations of ube farmers from those provinces with 500 farmer-members. Ube is a side crop, not a main crop, for the farmers. During the annual assembly of farmers, challenges are discussed, prices of ube are agreed upon, delivery dates throughout the year are scheduled. During the harvest season when ube is plentiful, the average price of ube is P50 a kilo. During the rainy season when ube is scarce, the price goes up to P75 a kilo.
One product that is seasonal is the strawberry jam, although it was the first Good Shepherd product in 1953. Strawberries were the native variety, small and sweet. Sister Guadalupe says, “The sisters just bought what was available in the market. As the number of tourists and the demand for the jam increased, the sisters provided capital to the farmers, interest free. The advanced capital is then deducted from the price paid for the strawberries. Prices are fixed, beneficial to the farmers and to the training center. The farms are in Atok, Longlong and Puguis (in Benguet), far from the strawberry fields watered by the polluted Balili River. The varieties today are Sweet Charlie, Camarosa, Chicago, Albion of Australia, San Andre of California, Red Rhapsody, Festival and Japanese. For our jam, we prefer the Sweet Charlie which are red, firm, not too watery.”
In October during Indigenous Peoples Month celebration, 15 strawberry farmers joined the center’s Mass, program and dances. Sister Guadalupe spoke with a woman farmer who has been supplying the center with her fruits for 20 years. The nun asked her how life has changed since she partnered with the center. Like the ube farmer, she said she lives in a decent house and provides for the needs of the family. Two of her daughters have finished college and are gainfully employed, one at the Philippine Military Academy and another at Dole.
Working students
There are 55 working students at the center, down from 200 before the pandemic years. Sister Guadalupe explains that the core program of the center is the student-workers’ program. “Although they are few in number after the pandemic, the training they receive remains holistic. All aspects are covered—academic, social, financial, physical, spiritual, emotional. All growth activities are done during paid time like Eucharistic celebrations, values formation, catechism classes, free acupuncture treatment by a doctor who comes twice a month.”
These students learn financial management since they are required to submit a two-week budget which they withdraw from their ATM cards. The rest of the salary is deposited in their bank account for big expenses like tuition. Sister Guadalupe says, “We encourage them to save for their higher years activities like field work, on-the-job training, practice teaching, etc. During their higher years, they have less time to work. One student had savings of P170,000 when he graduated from college.”
Time management or how to balance time for academics and work is one big challenge the student workers face. Some are too tired or sleepy to study after working or facing many academic demands. As a result, they absent themselves from work. If there is a conflict, studies prevail, Sister Guadalupe says.
BESTSELLERS Ube and strawberry jams and other baked products are among the bestsellers at Good Shepherd’s store in Baguio.
The center also trained the monks and staff in Guimaras, particularly Brother Rafael, who is in charge of food production. He sent some staff members to Baguio to learn how to make lengua de gato cookies and peanut brittle. The Guimaras version of lengua de gato has mango bits while their brittle is made of cashew nuts which are plentiful in the Visayan province.
Sister Guadalupe says, “We exchange best practices. Here in Baguio, we do not give credit. All transactions are in cash. Brother Rafael gives credit to his customers. Collecting or depositing postdated checks proved to be a challenge. I told him that since their products are sought after, he should demand cash payments.”
‘Force of nature’
The nun, who is an energetic 81 and a force of nature in her convent, has spent 58 years with the Good Shepherd congregation, 14 years of which were missions in the US (Los Angeles and Las Vegas) and Rome, Italy. In the Philippines, her assignments were in Buhi in Camarines Sur, Malabon, Quezon City, Cagayan de Oro and Baguio during martial law and Baguio again for 20 years.
She discloses, “I may have told you that I am also a breast cancer survivor for 17 years. I joined the Good Shepherd at age 21 coming from a protected life, the youngest of six siblings. What I am today I owe to the Good Shepherd who formed me, provided all the opportunities for growth, challenged me to expand my world. The Good Shepherd is in 68 countries, and I was sent to visit half of these countries in the five continents while on assignment in Rome not only once but several times.”
What keeps her going when she should have retired at 60? She says, “It is sharing in the mission of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd looks for the lost, tends the injured, brings back those who have strayed, restores the dignity of the downtrodden, keeps the health in view. It is very biblical.”