Food Resilience Through Root And Tuber Crops In Upland and Coastal Communities of The Asia-Pacific (FoodSTART+) and Fisheries, Coastal Resources and Livelihood Project (FishCORAL) followed up the successful Value Chain Training last September 2016 with a Training of Facilitators (TOF) of Farmer Business School (FBS) with Gender and Climate Change Perspectives conducted on April 3-7, 2017 in Leyte Park Hotel, Tacloban City, Philippines.
FoodSTART+ project is a collaborative effort of the CIP-CIAT partnership with the different IFAD investment projects, one of which is FishCORAL .
FishCORAL and FoodSTART+ collaborative partnership is mainly in the countryâs Eastern Visayas (Region VIII) under the formerâs livelihood component. The collaboration aims to improve livelihood situation and increase resilience of food systems in coastal communities through the Farmer Business School approach.
The intensive five-day training started with a field visit in a cassava grates, flour and food products enterprise that underwent FBS faciliated by the Visayas State University-Philippine Rootcrops Research and Traning Center (VSU-Philrootcrops) in Salcedo, Samar; and included two field exercises: in some of the FBS sites in Region VIII, and the public market. The training was participated by a pool of 24 facilitators from 8 pilot FBS sites â Liloan, Silago, Tolosa and Tanauan in Leyte; and Quinapondan, Basey, Marabut and Hernani in Samar â composed of a FishCORAL Community Facilitator (CF), Agricultural Technician (AT) from the FBS group Local Government, and a representative of the target FBS group. Also present in the training were FishCORAL Project Management and Coordination personnel and staff from the national and regional office, and additional CFs from San Juan (Southern Leyte), Abuyog (Leyte), Mercedes (Eastern Samar) and Talalora (Samar).
The training facilitators and resource persons included Dr. Julieta Roa, Visayas State University professor and member of the FoodSTART+ technical advisory pool, and FoodSTART+ technical staff. After the training, key persons from FishCORAL and FoodSTART+ met to agree on the action plan and next steps for the collaboration in 8 FishCORAL sites in Leyte and Samar provinces.
The newly-trained participants are now ready to take on their roles as facilitators when FishCORAL conducts the FBS on July 2017. FoodSTART+ will provide the technical backstopping and monitoring-mentoring all through out the implementation of the Farmer Business School.
Prepared by: GUADA MARIE BABILONA
Read the original blog post on the IFAD Asia website.