OFFICIALS from the Department of Education (DepEd) Los Baños, Laguna Sub-office, and Life Learning Organization of Peace (LLOP) visited the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) for an exploratory meeting regarding community engagement initiatives on Oct. 11.
DepEd Los Baños, Laguna Sub-office Public School District Supervisor Soledad Villanueva and LLOP CEO Pilar Habito with Arturo Cariaga discussed school garden and youth entrepreneurship initiatives with SEARCA.
Villanueva thanked SEARCA Center for its longstanding partnership with DepEd through the School-plus-Home Gardens Project (S+HGP).
"We are excited about expanding the S+HGP and further strengthening DEpEd's Gulayan sa Paaralan Project in Los Baños," she said.
Cariaga introduced the LLOP, whose mission is to foster community learning in Los Baños through collaborative thinking and interaction; mindful activities focused on health, environment, education, and arts; and livelihood initiatives framed as an entrepreneurship ecosystem in unity, solidarity, and teamwork.
Habito added that they were inspired to create a financial literacy and youth entrepreneurship program to complement the Philippine Republic Act (RA) 10679, also known as the "Youth Entrepreneurship Act."
Citing RA 10679, Habito said the promotion of financial literacy and youth entrepreneurship programs shall be taught in all education levels nationwide, "however, we realized that there are no community-based learning hubs here." She said LLOP plans to implement the program with DepEd Laguna and incorporate school gardening.
"What we need is coordination among ourselves, a collective effort among the organizations and institutions in the Los Baños community," Habito said.
While SEARCA is an international organization mandated to serve the Southeast Asian region, it has consistently reached out to the indigent villages in its host municipality of Los Baños, SEARCA Director Glenn Gregorio said.
"Our community outreach activities include feeding programs, breastfeeding awareness initiatives, and donating nutrition and hygiene kits to senior citizens," Gregorio said.
Sharon Malaiba, SEARCA Partnerships Unit head, added that the center has partnered with United Laboratories Inc. or Unilab, a leading pharmaceutical company in the Philippines, on a health and financial literacy seminar for smallholder farmers.
SEARCA also shared some community engagement activities involving the youth.
SEARCA Research and Thought Leadership program specialist Anna Gale Vallez reiterated the success of S+HGP and highlighted its offshoot projects: School-plus-Home Gardens cum Biodiversity Enhancement and Enterprise or SHGBEE and the School Edible Landscaping for Entrepreneurship or SEL4E Project.
SEARCA's banner youth engagement initiative, the Young Forces for Agricultural Innovation (#Y4AGRI), was introduced by Malaiba. The #Y4AGRI program, is guided by the principle of "by the youth, for the youth, and with the once youth," aims to "nurture young people as partners and stakeholders with the guidance of the once youth."
Citing some of its activities, including Sowing Seeds: Cultivating Youth's Future in Agriculture, Malaiba said the program aims to "introduce agriculture to senior high school students and highlight its potential as a career."
It also aims to introduce the Youth in Agri Talk Show, a non-academic and non-conventional approach to learning to promote agriculture and its importance to Southeast Asian youth, particularly those in primary education, she added.
SEARCA said the visitors were also briefed on the center's funding opportunities, such as the Grants for Research towards Agricultural Innovative Solutions or GRAINS.
GRAINS provide starter funds to researchers, scientists, inventors and agripreneurs to scale up their technology or innovation model.
Like GRAINS, the Seed Fund for Research and Training (SFRT), which provides starter funds to researchers and scientists, was also introduced to the visitors.
Both grants aim to foster innovation and development in agriculture but cater to different stages and types of projects.
While SFRT focuses more on initial research and training, GRAINS is geared toward scaling innovations.