ASEAN Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs: Teaching, cooking, and farming in Mindanao

By Maya M. Padillo
Correspondent

DAVAO CITY — Three of the ASEAN Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs awarded this year by the ASEAN Women Entrepreneurs Network (AWEN) have established themselves in different fields from their shared hometown Davao City, but the common thread among them is their pursuit of community involvement and the promotion of Mindanao, it’s people and products.

Joji Ilagan Bian, Mary Ann M. Montemayor, and Charita P. Puentespina are all locally recognized for their work, each having previously brought home various awards, but they see the AWEN conferment as an opportunity for reaching out to the bigger arena of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

“Networking and access to market, among others, are now open channels for us. Many new doors are now open for women entrepreneurs like us to thrive regionally,” said Ms. Montemayor, president and general manager of Villa Margarita Catering Services and president and chief executive officer of the Davao Ecocrafts Association, Inc.

For the food industry, Ms. Montemayor has contributed recipes in the Spice of Life cookbook of Brunei, to help promote Mindanao’s culinary offerings within the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area.

Before the establishment of the Ecocrafts group, Ms. Montemayor was already doing volunteer work with the T’boli and Bagobo indigenous peoples groups, giving small-scale trainings on organization and beading to help them set up livelihood activities.

“I hope that the AWEN business networking platform would further boost the credibility of our advocacies and businesses,” she said, referring to her fellow awardees from Davao.

Ms. Montemayor is also the Mindanao coordinator for GO Negosyo, the program for assisting micro, small and medium enterprises.

EDUCATION
Ms. Bian, in a separate interview with BusinessWorld, said their award “is an indication that in today’s borderless economy, our own city is home to many successful women entrepreneurs. That the women entrepreneurs are also an integral backbone of our city’s economic growth and prosperity.”

Ms. Bian, who previously chaired the Mindanao Business Council, is involved in the education business and has set up a foundation that rolls out learning programs for those who have limited financial capacity.

Among these projects is the Sunday School Program, targeted for individuals who cannot afford the transportation cost and the time to go to school everyday. Most of the beneficiaries have been housewives and household helpers. She also opened a “mobile” welding school in response to the big demand for skilled workers, bringing teachers and equipment directly to the barangays to train those who do not have enough money for transportation.

She has received the Patnubay Award in nongovernment organization work for education in recognition of her programs on free skills trainings and scholarships at the grassroots level.

Ms. Bian was also the youngest recipient of the Datu Bago Award in Business and Education, an annual recognition given to Davao’s City’s outstanding citizens.

“It’s a great honor to be recognized in the ASEAN level,” she said, and intends to use this to network and reach out to more women in the region.

FARMER
Ms. Puentespina, who was on medical leave from her tasks, is the founder of the Malagos Chocolate Group under the Puentespina Farms and Malagos Agri-Ventures, Inc.

Recognized as a pioneering cacao exporter, Ms. Puentespina said in an interview in 2014 that she “started exporting eight tons inside a 20-footer van, and from then on, I never had a refusal from my buyers.”

In August this year, cacao from the Puentespina Farm was recognized as one of the Best 50 Bean Samples out of the 166 samples received from 40 countries at the 2017 Edition of the Cocoa Excellence Programme in France.

The best samples will be processed into chocolates by the international technical committee and will be celebrated at the Salon du Chocolat in Paris on Oct. 28 to Nov. 1.

Ms. Puentespina’s son, Rex, carries the job title of “Chocolate maker” in their company and has been at the forefront of the growth of Malagos,

In a statement, Mr. Puentespina narrates how the family’s venture into cacao started in 2003 when his parents leased a cacao farm in Malagos, Davao City.

“A farmer at heart, Charita Puentespina rehabilitated the trees and soon after harvested the cacao pods. We now operate a 70-hectare cacao farm and employ around 50 in-house farmers. In addition to our own harvest, we also source wet cacao beans from more than 80 small growers in the area to promote sustainability in the community. We also built a training facility on the farm to teach farmers good cacao growing practices,” the Puentespina son said.

The Malagos chocolate products have so far earned nine international and two local awards, something that Mr. Puentespina said they credit and dedicate to the farmers.

Ms. Puentespina was also among those that established the Cacao Industry Development Association of Mindanao, Inc. (CIDAMI), which has been instrumental in getting government and public attention on the potential of cacao farming. With the Philippine Cacao Industry Road Map, which she helped push, now in place, Ms. Puentespina is hopeful that the sector would continue to be an avenue for poverty alleviation in the countryside.

The AWEN Outstanding Women Entrepreneurs were recognized during a ceremony at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) last Aug. 31.