Author: ovcre.upvisayas

Social mobilization has been found to be an important strategy for generating community participation in community development undertakings. This paper presents the results of a study that examined mobilization strategies of NGO-assisted grassroots enterprises in the provinces of Iloilo and Guimaras. Using a descriptive design, primary data was obtained through interviews with the entrepreneurs and analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Results show that mobilization strategies include information access, community dialogues, collective action, community partnerships, enterprise capability building, and client relations. Community development was realized in terms of socioeconomic benefits and political participation that entrepreneurs experienced with the assistance provided by the assisting NGO. In response to issues and concerns raised by the entrepreneurs, the study recommends using a governance approach in social mobilization to strategize organizational and business growth of the grassroots enterprises and enhance efforts towards community development.

Given the importance of grassroots enterprises in national development, there is a need to examine how such enterprises manage their operations in order that enterprises of similar scale or nature can learn from their experiences and also, that they can be better assisted towards sustainability of business operations. The paper is based on a case study that focused on the production and marketing operations of grassroots enterprises in the provinces of Iloilo and Guimaras as viewed through the lenses of the entrepreneurs themselves. These enterprises were assisted by a non-government organization through its micro-finance development project. Using a qualitative research design, primary data was generated through interviews with the management of the client associations and cooperatives. Findings show that the grassroots entrepreneurs are engaged in the production and marketing of agricultural products such as native chicken, goats, carabaos, and milkfish as well as handloom woven products. Marketing of products is done by the entrepreneurs themselves and mainly within Iloilo province. In order to address production and marketing concerns of the NGO-assisted entrepreneurs, the study recommends the complementation of government, NGO, and private sector in the delivery of business services to help ensure sustainability of grassroots enterprises. Such services include entrepreneurship trainings enhance production and marketing skills of the entrepreneurs as well as organizational strengthening activities, among others. The study also recommends a special government legislation to protect hablon/handloom weavers’ rights and welfare, and promote the hablon industry as part of the Filipino cultural heritage and also, as an important livelihood activity for grassroots entrepreneurs.

The paper presents the results of a study that looked into the business environments of grassroots enterprises in Iloilo and Guimaras. A descriptive design was used, and primary data was generated through interviews with 50 respondents from among the grassroots entrepreneurs. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. Findings show that the entrepreneurs identified and assessed consumer demand and preferences as economic forces that have positive effects on their business operations, while unemployment or underemployment of family members, and inflation and rising prices are seen as disadvantageous to the business. As far as social trends are concerned, outmigration and marriage are considered as having negative effects on enterprise operations while young people’s preference for non-vocational courses is perceived as beneficial to the business enterprises. New types of machinery and equipment; innovative designs for the hablon; availability of raw materials; opportunities to learn new skills, and new color schemes; and, wider dimensions of the tiral for hablon weaving are technological developments deemed advantageous to business operations by a majority of the entrepreneurs. Support of local government, as well as national leadership, legislations for micro-enterprise development, and government assistance to micro-entrepreneurs, are political factors perceived by the entrepreneurs as favorable to them. The study recommends strategic and coordinated business development services with the complementation of government, civil society organizations, and private sector efforts that address challenges and prospects afforded by the business environments of the NGO-assisted enterprises.

The internal environment of a business organization is a source of competitive advantage and allows for sustained growth and viability amidst stiff competition from industry rivals. This paper presents the results of a study that described the internal environments of grassroots enterprises in Iloilo and Guimaras as perceived by the entrepreneurs themselves. A descriptive design was used and primary data was generated through key informant interviews with officers of the enterprises and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings reveal major themes as follows: there is the formality and legitimacy of organization structures and business operations; final authority for decision-making is shared widely among the membership; the observance of the values of democratic management, active membership engagement in the activities of their enterprises, and volunteerism. Moreover, there is an established financial system in terms of fund generation, budgeting, recordkeeping, and regular auditing; and business performance assessed as “successful” since there is continuity of business operations and substantial payment of loans. The study recommends the use of community development interventions to buildup the social capital of the enterprises and conversion of the associations into cooperative enterprises in order to benefit from the preferential option given by the government to cooperatives and economies of scale in production and marketing.

This paper looks at the potential of the Panay Bukidnon hinun-anon (traditional stories) as a rich source of learning and appreciation of Kinaray-a in the implementation of the Indigenous Peoples Education (IPEd) and Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB MLE) by the Department of Education. The hinun-anon are stories of entertainment, sources of traditional information about village life, medium for communicating norms of behavior, and perspectives about the natural environment. Three examples are presented: Tikdayaw, Tinggurob, and Tingway Tingway. The characters, environment, and storyline provides magic and enchantment as well as images and messages reflecting environmental concerns and exemplifying important social values.

Education should not only seek to strengthen the intellect but should also aim to build character. In the Philippines, character education is an integral part of the curriculum. This study sought to contribute to the program’s pedagogical framework by advocating an experiential learning approach to character development, specifically in the cultivation of virtues. The Aristotelian concept of virtue development and the experiential approach to learning were the frameworks utilized to guide this study. The participants were thirty-five senior high school students at the University of the Philippines Visayas. The learning experience utilized was a one-month virtue challenge, wherein students were asked to identify virtues that they would want to start to cultivate within the context of their everyday life. An experiential learning reflection guide was used for their narratives which were thematically analyzed using an inductive method (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The data gathered included six virtues that the participants personally chose to cultivate, namely, thriftiness, industry, keeping healthy, self-reflection, joyfulness, and propriety, along with their corresponding activities; related virtues also emerged parallel to the six; challenges and strategies were also identified, and some key learning points.The study concluded that learning which included character development was a result of personal choice and that experiential learning was a necessary component in its process. Although the activity was classroom simulated, the experience and struggle were real; therefore, meaningful for the students.The study recommends for a pedagogical innovation in character education initiatives specifically in the creation of relevant learning spaces anchored on student reality.

The long-term sustainability of industries such as agri-food production systems is essential in the light of pressures to satisfy diverse customer needs, to comply with government regulations, and to maintain a business’s core competency. This has led to the identification of the best management practices for highly critical and important commodities, as in the case of muscovado sugar. This paper attempts to gauge the performance of sugarcane production and management technology for use in the muscovado sugar production in the province of Antique vis-à-vis recommended production management practices. A survey was conducted in seven sugarcane-producing municipalities with 79 respondents, determined using the 2-stage random sampling. The level of production technology was evaluated using the scale of technology adopted by the farmers. Results show that the industry is on a par with best management practices in the areas of planting practices, planting material selection, closing in timing, harvesting practices, trash management, shuttle shaving, and variety programming. The industry in the Province lags behind in the areas of soil preparation and fertilizer application. It is recommended that all interventions geared towards improving the industry performance be anchored on evidence-based research findings. Moreover, it is further recommended that, to improve productivity in sugarcane production, the industry in Antique has to capitalize on its strengths while working on towards the improvement of critical areas mentioned.

With Facebook rapidly becoming an essential business tool, academic institutions offering business courses must integrate the use of social media into their programs. Key to the successful implementation of such integration is the identification of factors that could influence overall and academic Facebook use, which is the purpose of this study. A questionnaire was administered to 324 University of the Philippines in the Visayas – College of Management (UPV-CM) students who were selected through random sampling. The results of the survey, which were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) and ordered logistic regression, showed that trust in Facebook and the temporal dissociation subconstruct of cognitive absorption are robust predictors for overall and academic Facebook use. On the other hand, students with high self-regulation metacognitive strategies would spend less time on overall Facebook use but self-regulation has no significant impact on academic usage of Facebook. Surprisingly, trust in other Facebook users is negatively related to both overall and academic Facebook use. This study shows that low trust in other Facebook users, which could be attributed to the rise of fake news and “online incivility” in Facebook, would not adversely affect the overall and academic Facebook use of a UPV-CM student. 43% of the students’ Facebook use is spent on academic activities. This is an indicator that these students are already adapting Facebook for educational purposes to remain relevant and enabled in the digital era. The results could help faculty and companies adopt social media usage for their specific needs.

This paper focuses on orality and oral traditions that continue to find expression in contemporary texts like the Hiligaynon short stories as expression of power and are thus responses to contemporary socio-historical realities. The definitions of voice and orality are based on Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy (1982), Trinna Frever’s The Woman Writer and the Spoken Word: Gender, Print, Orality, and Selected Turn-of-the-Century American Women’s Literature (1998), and Salwa Karoui-Elounelli’s “Unsounded Vocality: The Trope of Voice and the Paradigm of Orality in American Postmodern Fiction (2010). How orality and oral traditions serve as expressions of power in written texts is based on Mikhail Bahktin’s emphasis on the “dialogic” in the Discourse in the Novel (1934-35), bell hooks’ concept of “yearning” (1990), Homi Babha’s concept of hybridity in The Location of Culture (1994), and Benedict Anderson’s proposition on the politics of language and culture in Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (1990). An analysis of the seven selected Hiligaynon short stories reveals that various elements of orality like musical and rhythmic progression, unsounded or non-verbal vocality, mixed voices, and choral voices, as well as oral traditions like folk and novelty songs and loa or luwa, the binalaybay (poem), and ulawhay (love song) are expression of power in contending with various forms of dominance.

(Review of Penetrations: In Steel Masks, an exhibition of 20 free-standing and wall-bound sculptures by Martin Genodepa, October 19-November 10, 2016, Casa Real Gallery, Old Iloilo Provincial Capitol Building, Iloilo City.)