Lumad Students Attend Training on Social Entrepreneurship
- 11
- Aug
Twenty three Lumad students from University of Mindanao attended the Social Entrepreneurship training course last August 11 – 12, 2012 held in Davao City. The training equips budding social entrepreneurs with information on getting started in their social enterprise ventures by providing tips on business strategies, planning, marketing and resource mobilization. It highlights that social enterprises, like business enterprises, is also concerned with financial sustainability. Modules integrate the use of management practices (human resource, marketing, operations and finance) with sustainable development.
The training course was requested by University of Mindanao’s Office of Student Affairs specifically for Paglaum, a college organization whose members are mostly Lumad. The Lumad are the indigenous people in Mindanao. Paglaum plans to launch a social enterprise that can help finance the miscellaneous expenses of the Lumad scholars. Paglaum means “hope” in the vernacular.
Their social enterprise is in its’ planning phase, making the delivery of the training very timely. In the course of the training, the students were encouraged to refine their social enterprise product and define who the stakeholders are. By the end of the training, the students were able to define their product and social enterprise idea. They plan on conducting urban container gardening, planting mostly organic vegetables that they can sell to vendors in their cafeteria and to UM faculty and students. At present, they have began planting eggplant and snow cabbage or petchay.
SEDPI Program Manager Emilenn Kate Sacdalan and Program Officer Denise Subido facilitated the training course. The training and the trainers were well-received and were rated excellent. The participants found the training very helpful, with one students saying that her understanding of social enterprise widened. Another student said that he is, “being open about opportunities because now I know how and where to find solutions for our financial problem.”