The Philippine Development Assistance Programme (PDAP)

World Accord's work in the Philippines is done in partnership with PDAP (the Philippine Development Assistance Programme). In 1997, PDAP launched a new and innovative four-year program called Promoting Participation in Sustainable Enterprises (PPSE), centered on market and industry development. The project aimed to increase participation in civil society and create access to natural, agricultural and financial resources to foster business ventures within poverty stricken communities. These businesses enabled people to be more productive and competitive in the economic development of their regions.

Through PPSE's education and training initiatives, 3,500 families working on farm estates:

• Improved their management skills
• Learned environmental conservation techniques
• Boosted agricultural productivity
• Expanded the organic rice industry
• Strengthened individual and organizational capacity for rural enterprise development
• Developed community policies to strengthen support for rural development

Building Sustainable Enterprise

Within the diversity of micro-enterprises is the common pressing need for working capital, or the money to buy the raw resources and supplies – seeds, grain, wool, thread, cloth, etc. – that the enterprise needs to operate. The poor lack the resources and opportunity to raise sufficient working capital and so in order to become entrepreneurs they must rely on borrowed money. But few formal banks or other lending institutions will provide assistance to people in poor rural communities, which forces them to turn to black market money lenders who charge many times higher rates of interest. No matter how hard they work, with interest costs eating up virtually all their profits the small farmer or micro-entrepreneur soon becomes trapped in a cycle of debt.

World Accord and PDAP offer micro-credit programs aimed at helping poor Philippinos escape from this debt-trap. The programs aim to provide the community with the entrepreneurial and credit management skills that will enable them to operate their own self-sustaining micro-credit program using seed capital offered by PDAP. This education process (sometimes referred to as building social credit) involves:

• Creating awareness of social and economic issues
• Values and ethics formation
• Building cooperatives
• Community leadership training
• Saving programs

 Instilling these principles into the community builds a strong foundation that enables them to create lasting social change and nurture progressive entrepreneurship.