FOCUS
Creating Economic Opportunities
Promoting Health and Fighting Disease

MDGs ADDRESSED
MDG 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
MDG 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women
MDG 8: Create a global partnership for development

OVERVIEW
The Philippines is home to 90 million people—and over one-quarter live in poverty.  Almost half of the population resides in rural areas, where poverty is most severe and widespread.  Eighty percent of rural Filipinos depend on subsistence farming or fishing to survive and earn a living.  The country is vulnerable to frequent natural disasters, such as typhoons and floods that can destroy crops, leading to food shortages and hunger. 

Persistent poverty has created a situation where 28 million Filipinos cannot afford to purchase food to meet their nutritional needs.  In many rural areas, people are at risk of contracting deadly water-borne diseases due to the inaccessibility of clean water.  Both malnutrition and infectious gastroenteritis are among the top ten cause of death among infants and children under five.

Our PARTNER
Episcopal Relief and Development is partnering with the Episcopal Church of the Philippines (ECP). ECP’s Community Based Development Program was born in the 1980s to pursue social and economic development in its six dioceses. ECP’s efforts to address poverty include programs in sustainable agriculture, gender equality, environment, health care, education, and socioeconomic justice.  The leadership and membership of the Episcopal Church of the Philippines are largely from indigenous communities in the North and South of the country, placing the church in a unique position to respond to economic, social, and cultural needs of rural tribal communities.

Our CURRENT PROGRAMS
Episcopal Relief and Development has been providing support to the ECP’s Community Based Development Program since 1998.  Given the extraordinary level of need and the complexities of the environment, the program has over time developed an integrated model of community development.  ECP’s program model addresses issues of food supply, health care, environmental awareness, and gender sensitivity at the village level, relying on the participation and appraisal of village members as the driving force for community change. ECP’s development work stresses values formation towards justice and cooperation in the local community and a deliberate focus on implementing projects that reach the poorest of the poor.

Creating Economic Opportunities
Episcopal Relief and Development is supporting rural indigenous communities in their efforts to improve food production and create long-term economic opportunities.

• Cooperative sale of farm produce helps vegetable farmers in a community in the Diocese of Santiago increase family incomes, access affordable credit, and improve management and leadership skills.
• Post-harvest equipment including mechanized mills, threshers, solar dryers and grain storage buildings reduces the amount of time women and children spend drying and pounding grain and helps farmers get a higher price for their harvest in six communities in three dioceses.
• Micro-finance opportunities and cooperatives, along with training, provision of seeds and fertilizers give families in the Diocese of Southern Philippines opportunities to start or improve vegetable farms to increase their income.
• A community-owned solar dryer for grain harvesting, a bio-gas digester to manufacture natural fertilizer, and piglets help increase production and income for families in Bayug in the Diocese of North Central Philippines.
• A goat farm operated by two communities whose crops have been repeatedly affected by typhoons provides an alternative, stable source of income in the Diocese of Northern Luzon.
• Cargo tramlines that carry farm produce across steep mountain terrain reduce the amount of time rural farmers in the indigenous Igorot community of Ambagiw must spend transporting their goods to regional market centers.
• A community farm in the Diocese of the Central Philippines for members of the Dumagat indigenous group provides a stable source of income by growing coffee and daladan (a citrus fruit), and reduces the need for traditional slash and burn agricultural techniques that damage the environment.
• A fruit processing cooperative managed by community women and run on solar power, produces jams for regional sale in the Diocese of Northern Philippines.

Promoting Health and Fighting Disease
Episcopal Relief and Development is preventing deadly diseases spread by contaminated water supplies while helping to protect the vulnerable environments of watershed areas. 

• New water systems provide access to potable water and free women who were formerly transporting water to pursue income generating opportunities in Tubtuba in the Diocese of Northern Philippines and in Cudal in the Province of Kalinga in the Diocese of Northern Luzon. 
• Planting of seedlings protects the vulnerable watershed areas and promotes environmentally sustainable farming.

Our PAST ACHIEVEMENTS
Examples of Episcopal Relief and Development’s past partnership activities in the Philippines include:

• Providing agricultural trainin at the Saytan Demonstration Farm for farmers from the Bago tribe in the Diocese of North Central Philippines, while improving productivity and food sufficiency through fruit tree planting, fish farming, and pig raising.
• Training in livestock management, which improved personal income in each of the villages by up to 30%. 
• Constructing an irrigation system in Basao and Makilo which will allow farmers to cultivate dry land and harvest two crops per year.
• Helping diocesan cooperatives provide micro-loans to subsistence farmers, fishermen, vendors, and small entrepreneurs in both rural and urban areas.  Eighty percent of the loan recipients were women.