MARCH 23, 2015

NR # 3779B

Entrepreneurship training for women pushed

A lady lawmaker has asked the government to empower women in the barangays by providing
them entrepreneurship training that would enable them to utilize their full potential and improve their
families quality of life.
In a privilege speech, Rep. Elenita Milagros Ermita-Buhain (1st District, Batangas) said including
the womenfolks families in the governments Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps or granting
them loans is not the only solution to the problem of poverty.
Now is the time that we have to refocus our energies on our womenfolk not just by including
their families in the 4Ps or extending them loans. What is needed is to empower them by teaching those
skills and knowledge that they could always turn to. Entrepreneurship is one of these windows, ErmitaBuhain said.
Ermita-Buhain, who recently delivered her speech to mark the celebration of the International
Womens Month, said while many women distinguished themselves in the fields of education, medicine,
the arts, culture, sciences and even politics, a greater number of womenfolk, especially in the countryside,
need more empowerment.
Many of them are plain housewives, mothers and idle womenfolk who depend on the men in
their families and in the community and are often voiceless because they do not have the capacity to
support their families needs, Ermita-Buhain said.
But these women, she stressed, are still very potent though they may be silent.
Ermita-Buhain said in 2011, she helped organize a group of womenfolk in the barangays of
Batangas first district called the Kilusan ng mga Kababaihan sa Unang Distrito. The organizers taught
the women the values of uniting with their fellow mothers and housewives and embark on
entrepreneurship. With a start-up capital of between P10,000 to P20,000, the women launched bigasan
ng bayan, mini-grocery stores and farm inputs trading.
After two years, some chapters failed to sustain their operations but a greater number succeeded,
encouraging Ermita-Buhain to initiate a tie-up with Technical Education and Skills Development
Authority (TESDA), through which the women can obtain some skills to diversify their businesses.
Hopefully, the message will sink in among the number of our womenfolk that there is no greater
assistance that could be extended them but the mutual support they extend to each other. The ones that
flourished well were the ones who believed in themselves, in their capacity to make changes in the
quality of their lives and the ones who dared to dream, Ermita-Buhain said.
Ermita-Buhain said for so long, the government has been thinking of ways by which it can
empower women. Providing them entrepreneurship skills is the answer, the lawmaker said.
In pushing for her proposal, she quoted a proverb that says, Give a man a fish and he will last a
day; but teach him how to fish and he will last for a lifetime.
If we teach our women entrepreneurship, it is like planting a tree today that will bear much fruit
in the future, Ermita-Buhain said. (30) mrs