Hi, my name is Klent and I work as a Community Facilitator in CLAD. I’m from the municipality of Calubian and it is located at the north-western part of Leyte. The common problems in our community is poverty, more of the calubianons earn less income especially in mountain areas and it causes many things like malnutrition, hunger, committing crimes, out of school youths, and people migrating into other places.
To minimize the problem, we proposed to DISOP and HEIFER an International NGO to address the problem. We strategically organized the farmers into groups and strengthened them by having lots of trainings, seminars and cross visits. After that, families received livestock for their livelihood from the project.
Once their livestock give birth, the farmers have to pass it on into another family who don’t have animals so that they also have their own. We call it passing on the gifts. So now, members are empowered and have their own sustainable livelihood.
We didn’t stop helping all poor farmers. We continue to provide trainings on demand like rice, vegetables production and hillside farming to inform the latest technology for good production.
That’s our way to help our villagers, because we believe in the saying that “give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day but teach a man how to fish and he will eat for life”.