Vegetable pickles are Dalaguete’s grassroots enterprise

HOLDING on to the basic business principles of partnership, cooperation, volunteerism and hard work, a group of 25 women from barangay Balud, Dalaguete, southern Cebu formed themselves into an association in 2003 with the help of the municipal social welfare and development office.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Visayas (DSWD-7) introduced the women villagers to its pro-poor credit facility called Self-Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran (SEA-K).

The DSWD initially released P5,000 seed capital for a livelihood project to each of the 25 women beneficiary which amounted to P125,000. The credit assistance was payable in two years on a weekly basis without collateral nor interest.

The P125,000 was invested on projects like buy and sell, food vending, farming, sari-sari stores and hog raising.

The Balud Women’s Association said aside from the seed capital, all of them also received capability building and livelihood trainings as well as seminars helpful for their livelihood projects, such as simple accounting, bookkeeping, planning and value formation, product packaging and marketing.

With the inputs given by the government and partner non-government organizations, Nenita Brandares and fellow members started conceptualizing their vegetable pickle business.

Every week, each member pays only P85 to their association. Of the amount, P50 goes to the government as payment of their loan, P25 is deposited to their local bank account in a form of forced savings, P5 is set aside as an emergency fund and the remaining P5 as their association’s operational fund.

Two years after, the association was able to return in full to the government their seed capital, but this time with P65,000 counterpart savings which they also used to start their lending business.

With a good track record of repaying their weekly obligations for two years, the members were entitled to twice the amount of their first loan, and thus they grew from SEA-Kaunlaran to SEA-Kabayan.

Their individual capital was doubled from P5,000 to P10,000. Each of them were extended with additional P10,000 for their house repairs or improvement.

The association started producing vegetable pickles as the town of Dalaguete is known for their variety of affordable and locally produced vegetables like carrots, bell pepper, papaya and the like.

As they grew big, gain more regular customers and have more demands of their best selling pickles, their production also grew bigger. In fact they are now selling their produce to big malls in the Cebu City like Robinson’s Cybergate in Fuente Osmeña.