Helping the Mangkhut victims in Abra, Philippines

On behalf of the beneficiaries, we would like to convey our deepest gratitude to the Global Giving donors for your generosity, and to Global Giving Field Traveller Grace for visiting and monitoring our project areas.

Located in the low-lying areas close to the Abra river of Barangay Lagben and Barangay Dalnatan Sitio Pudaw Dolores, Abra, our marginalized beneficiaries are prone to flooding. Often affected by disasters and the low prices of produce imposed by the middlemen/buyers, according to our beneficiaries, crop production is like gambling as income is not stable.

The 50-hectare field planted with rice, already at a flowering stage, owned by the local farmers of Lagben was damaged by the river that has overflown. The 0.25-meter thick debris and rubbles carried by the flowing water posed a heavy burden among the locals. The risk of being bitten by snakes taking refuge among the rubbles and waiting for it to dry up, it took them 3 months to clear their field, in preparation for vegetable production.

Right after the disaster, we immediately reached out by providing the victims relief goods such as old clothes, canned goods, medicines, and rice. To help them in their immediate recovery, we provided them vegetable seeds, high yielding varieties of corn, water pump machines to irrigate their crops, lent them our agricultural machineries to prepare their land prior to their actual planting, and provided them technical assistance to maximize their production.

With the help of Global Giving donors, they are now gradually recovering. They were grateful for all the agricultural inputs provided but most especially the technique that we imparted on how to save and store seeds for the next cropping season. This technique is proven to be effective and sustainable because they do not need to buy commercial seeds nor rely from us on free seeds. This lessens their agricultural input costs, hence helping them in gaining higher profit.

Ms. Eliza said that the assistance from the Global Giving helped her family in restarting their lives. With the seeds and other provided agricultural inputs, life is gradually going back to normal and she is thankful for the given opportunity.

Meanwhile, small-scale farmers like Mr. Amante was worried before as where to get a capital for him to be able to resume to his farming activities. Through the assistance of Global Giving, he was able to cultivate his rice field. He said that his heart is at peace now that he is gradually recovering.

With 50 household families benefiting from our project, we are the only organization working in these two areas. Now, we are encouraging other disaster survivor families to venture into other crops such as sugarcane to diversify their farming production and thus help increase their income.