Lanao Sur folk now proud producers of herbal medicines

COTABATO CITY – There are two once idle, virtually indolent communities in Lanao del Sur that are now proud producers of herbal medicines and vegetables never before sold in traditional Maranaw tabuh (trading sites) in previous years.

The grinding poverty that gripped the two areas – Pinantao and Upper Itil, in Kapatagan and Balabagan towns, respectively – for many decades was partly blamed on “neglect” by local leaders.

It took organizers a long time convincing residents of Pinantao, a secluded area in Kapatagan, Lanao del Sur, and Barangay Upper Itil in Balabagan town, also in the same province, to “reinvent” themselves into what they are now today – productive entrepreneurs whose merchandise are sold in surrounding municipalities.

Residents in the two barangays are beneficiaries of the Learning Livelihood and Food Sufficiency (LLFS), a special socio-economic thrust of the World Bank-assisted Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Social Fund Project (ASFP).

Remedios Respicio, municipal facilitator of ASFP projects in Kapatagan, a coastal town in the second district of Lanao del Sur, said many residents in Barangay Pinantao relied mainly on “subsistence farming” in the past due to the absence of much-needed economic interventions from the outside.

Through the joint efforts of the ASFP and various community organizations, residents in Pinantao learned how to produce herbal medicines and condiments, which they now sell to surrounding towns, earning for them extra income needed to send their children to schools.

“The coming of the ASFP to our community was the first ever. We did not hesitate to accept the LLFS project for our barangay, being the first-ever attempt to help our community grow into a progressive community,” a mother of four, Mandih Sales, said in the Cebuano dialect.

The LLFS is a sub-component of CDA that aims to provide the poor and the vulnerable with opportunities to improve their economic self-reliance, family welfare, and the peace situation within their respective communities.

The LLFS is a sub-component of the ASFP’s Community Development Assistance, which aims to help provide socio-economic empowerment of impoverished communities in the autonomous region.

Some of the ASFP’s major socio-economic thrusts in the autonomous region, are jointly managed by ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampa­tuan and lawyer Mustapha Sambola­wan, funded by the Japan Bank on International Cooperation.

Sambolawan said the LLFS has three dimensions – functional literacy training; food sufficiency activities; livelihood skills training; and start-up capital for income generating activities – focused on hastening productivity of beneficiary communities.

In Barangay Upper Itil, a secluded area in Balabagan, residents once hooked to drinking and gambling vices have changed as a result of the LLFS, according to local officials.

“Many villagers spent so much time for card games such as `tong-its’ and in drinking tuba (coconut wine) during their free time,” said Modesta Araniego, who coordinates existing ASFP projects in Balabagan.

Araniego said after learning of the potentials of backyard gardening and other village-level cottage industries, residents in the area agreed and directly participated in the LLFS project for their barangay.

Participating barangay folk were provided with education trips to the state-run University of Southern Mindanao in Kabacan, North Cotabato, for them to learn the basics of agricultural entrepreneurship.

The barangay chairman of Upper Itil, Osmundo Buagas Tocao, gave his constituents involved in the LLFS project of the ASFP with a hectare of land for them to have an area where to start with vegetable gardening.

“Now many idle lands in our barangay are planted with eggplant, cabbage, root crops, and many other leafy vegetables which are delivered to markets in surrounding towns on a regular basis,” Tocao said.