The Foundation's goal of harnessing rural development is anchored on the development of cooperatives whose membership belongs to the marginalized sectors of society.
Its participation mainly responds to the need for the acquisition of knowledge, honing of skills, and values formation through co-financing.
This is being implemented through the Philippine Countryside Program (PCP), a cooperative management training program inspired by the German Raiffeisen Cooperative Movement, with two component interventions:
- First, the promotion of the Socioeconomic Cooperative Consolidation and Integration (SCCI) framework as an organizing strategy for the Philippine cooperative movement.
- Second, the actual establishment of models of cooperative integration through the Strategic Organizational Resource Development (SORD) strategy (training and education) together with key stakeholders such as local governments, agri-business sector, academe, non-government organizations and people's organizations.
The ultimate goal is to develop viable and sustainable cooperative business networks and leadership espousing democratic principles and participatory processes towards social transformation.
The PCP is mainly undertaken through the provision of training and education focusing on leadership and advanced management courses.
An important component of the program is the Trainors' Training aimed at developing a core of highly-skilled "multipliers" in the rural area with the capability to transfer skills and know-how, provide technical advice on the business operations of cooperatives and work towards the formation of a national network of strategic co-op knowledge resources from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
The training activities are conducted on a year-round basis in the priority areas in cooperation with local institutions, both governmental and non-governmental.
In September 2002, an expansion program of the PCP entitled "Institutional Capacity-Building and Livelihood Assistance for Peace and Development" was initiated in Western Mindanao in cooperation with local partners and other foreign donor agencies.
Program Implementation
The target groups are a critical mass of cooperative trainors, leaders and managers, as well as major stakeholders from the government, business sector and civil society.
A pool of trainors composed of professionals and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines has been organized in each of the priority areas to sustain the program in the future.
Moreover, the Philippine Countryside Program will be institutionalized by evolving viable training institutions in the local areas which can house and offer these management courses.
The training methodologies are highly participatory and demand much reflection and sharing of experiences and information among the participants and resource persons.
It uses "folk media" to instill the discipline of management - analysis, planning, organization, coordination and control - in terms that are familiar to them.
It consists of a combination of lectures, group discussions, workshops, open forum, games and simulation exercises.
From 1989 to 2002, the training and education activities conducted under this program reached a total of 896 for about 34,664 trainees.
The partner organizations are:
- the Institute for People Power and Development/Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. Foundation (IPPD/BSAF)
- Negros Oriental Development Center (NODC)
- National Cooperative Movement (NCM), an alumni association of Filipino cooperative delegates to Bavaria, Germany and South Korea, and,
- Philippine Federation of Credit Cooperatives (PFCCO).
This program has been turned over to the local partners, except for some follow-up activities with the National Cooperative Movement.
