Returnees and terminated Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) who decided to stay in their barangay in Lias Silangan and Kanluran, Barlig reaped free skills training from the Department of Science and Technology Mountain Province (DOST MP) to sustain their livelihood as an alternative source of income.
A total of 23 participants from Karaykay Overseas Filipino Workers Organization (KOWFO) and other interested in Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) was convened for the implementation of the said training on September 26-27, 2019 through the coordination of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and LGU-Barlig.
The hands-on training was focused in making nutri-baked products, pie, and pasta out of lemon, orange, and any locally grown vegetables in the community. This serves as a start up in creating their enterprises and invests them to have an alternative source of income.
“I am very satisfied on this training because we already learned how to bake breads and planned as our alternative livelihood for our organization. Further, baked products are to be processed here in Lias out of fruits any available grown vegetables so that the community need not to buy commercial products in Bontoc or in some bakeshop,” Sylvia Nabobus said.
Ms. Nonyvic S. Bastian who served as the trainer from ALS-DepEd shared to the participants the different procedures in baking, ingredients to be used and its proper measurement, set-up of equipment and utensils, and other techniques to come-up with delicious baked products.
With all the procedures imparted to them, they were trained to make lemon curd, lemon and buko pie, cheese bun, nutri-baked noodles, a combination of lemon and orange cookies, squash cinnamon bread, and cake in kangkong flavour.
One of the participant who is a differently-abled expressed her happiness in joining the training. Cherry Salimbuat can only bake breads and cookies but is limited and didn’t able to accommodate the community needs because of her situation. “I am very interested and this will really helped me to improve my knowledge in baking since I am not expert enough especially in making pie and pastas,” she added.
Accordingly, Barlig is known as a producer of different varieties of sweet oranges and lemon in Mountain Province but the production is only for home consumption and for marketing. Though this can be turned into processed products to be established by the community itself to at least improve their marketability and as an avenue to sustain their livelihood.
In the future, Magie Obonan from LGU-Barlig said that the organization be produce organic baked products that will help them establish an in the barangay level, expanding slowly and uplifting the economic conditions of their families and household income. It also included individuals from business sectors and organization with the knowledge on transfer skills on the production of various bake products.
By: Jorlyn Ligawad