Cebu shares coop's success story with Iloilo

Iloilo City, Philippines  — The unprecedented growth of Cebu Province is inspired by the great success of Cebu CFI Community Cooperative that was founded by retired Judge Esperanza Garcia, the mother of Governor Gwendolyn Garcia.

This was shared yesterday by Gov. Garcia as guest speaker before the more than 700 public school teachers during the 42nd General Assembly of CFI in Iloilo City.

Garcia related her administration when she was first elected governor in 2004 to how her mother started the cooperative with only 29 members in 1970 with a goal to help her fellow court employees be free from the bondage of loan sharks.

Garcia said their family was not really comfortably well-off but as she grew up, she could see how the cooperative was much a part of their lives.

“Because I grew up in this atmosphere where I saw selfless and dedicated service to improve the lives of others, this molded me to be the person that I am today,” Garcia said.

Garcia said that the direction she has chartered out for the province must have worked because Cebu is seeing unprecedented growth and progress of development.

“I must say it is precisely because this Gwen Garcia grew up in an atmosphere that has molded her to save others even before one self,” she said.

Garcia added that the growing number of members of the CFI since the past decades is translated into human terms because of its members.

Judge Garcia, fondly called Mam Inday, is considered by coop members “as a landmark of strength and success, a dynamo in cooperativism, with compassionate heart with benevolent concern to those who have less in life.”  (FREEMAN)