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Overseas Filipinos Diaspora Remittances for Development (OFs-ReD) Project:

Building a Future Back Home

Accomplishment Report

Mr. Rodrigo Garcia Jr.

Commission on Filipinos Overseas

I will report on the accomplishment of the OF-ReD and its subcomponents for the past

three years. I’ll start with covering the three subcomponents, the Collective Remittance

Fund, Remittance for Development Council (ReDC) and Migration and Development

Initiative for Region 1 (MDI-1). My colleague here will be presenting the PESO Sense.

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We did not expect that the project will evolve into several subcomponents but it did. It

started with the Overseas Filipinos for Development in Taguig and Ilocos Norte. But at

the same time there are several off shoots to it, first the Remittance for Development

Council (ReDC) and Migration and Development Initiative for Region 1 (MDI-1) and of

course, the highly popular PESO Sense.

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I will just first give a brief rundown of how we did in the first quarter of the project,

because as you know, 2010 to 2013 is the first part of the project, but it was continued

and extended for another three years, covering the period of 2013 to 2015.

In 2011, we made several inventory of remittance rules, laws and regulations. We

conducted at least fourteen focused group discussions with various stakeholders

involving banks, remittance companies, migrant groups, members of civil society

organizations working for migrants, academe and several government migrant serving

agencies. And then we presented the results to the BSP governor himself. We also

reported in a policy forum on remittances five years ago. We also worked for the

mainstreaming of migration and development in the Philippine Development Plan 2011-

2016 of the Aquino administration. We also had several capacity building trainings in

Ilocos Norte and Taguig. And in November 2011, the first Remittance for Development

Council (ReDC) was convened. Initially it was called Collective Remittance Council but

after that it was renamed as ReDC to reflect the development aspect of remittances.

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In 2012, we saw the creation of Migration and Remittance for Development Council in

Ilocos Norte and at the same time, the establishment of the Collective for Remittance

Fund, which started lending to migrant owned enterprises in the province of Ilocos

Norte.

The following year, 2013, we launched the financial literacy campaign called the PESO

Sense.

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And then from 2014 up to the current year, we continued the Collective Remittance

Fund in Ilocos Norte, we expanded PESO Sense to cover mobile based application, we

continued convening the Remittance for Development Council. And then we started a

new project last year, the Migration and Development Initiative for Region 1 (MDI-1).

We want to mainstream migration and development in the regional and provincial

development plans of the provinces. And we also started documenting the stories of the

loan borrowers of the collective remittance fund and of course we created the website of

the OFReD, ofredtipudno.com to highlight the initiatives that we did in the province.

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Just to provide an overview, this is how the Collective Remittance Fund started with 1

million pesos each from the Western Union Foundation, the Provincial Government of

Ilocos Norte and the Cooperative Bank of Ilocos Norte, which is the depository bank.

They pooled in 1 million each, with a total pf three miliion, which is used to lend to

migrant owned enterprises in Ilocos Norte.

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So far, beginning the 4th quarter of 2013 until December 2015, as to what the

cooperative bank reported to us, we now have a total of 70 loans amounting to over 5

million pesos. As you can see, we have exceeded the pooled fund of three million, that’s

why the Cooperative Bank of Ilocos Norte had pooled in a standby fund of 10 million

pesos just to infuse an additional capital since we didn’t expect that a lot of migrants

would be interested to the fund.

Most of these funds went to finance micro-small enterprises such as dragon fruit

planting, bagnet making, hog breeding, garlic production and to small enterprises like

retail stores.

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This is the website that we did which documents the initiatives the stories, our

experiences in implementing the OFReD. We’re using this website to serve as a

platform for our future plan of crowdfunding among the Ilocano Diaspora so that they

can contribute to the fund since this is the original concept before the local based

agencies would pool I fund, there must be a counterpart from the overseas Ilocanos.

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At the same time, we also did an audiovisual presentation featuring case stories of

those who have borrowed to the fund. It is also embedded in the website.

We also did several infographics and posters, which we also featured during last

month’s National Women’s Month celebration, the Faces of OFReD, the stories of

migrant borrowers. We did not anticipate that majority of the borrowers are women, so

the gender component was there and we were surprised that a lot of them are women.

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Currently, we just have finished the documentation of these stories. We transformed it

initially into an electronic publication called the Faces of OFReD. Samples of the print

outs are included in your kits. We hope to get funding for its physical publication later

on. It’s a collection of local stories of the borrowers to the fund.

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After the Collective Remittance Fund, I will now go to the second part of the OFReD

accomplishment report, which is the ReDC, which we convened in November 2011. So

far, we have concluded at least 12 meetings. It is composed of representatives from the

government, private sector, civil society organizations, academe and other industry

players either in the remittance or the commercial bank doing remittance services. It

serves as a forum wherein issues regarding remittances are discussed.

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And also, another subcomponent of the OFReD is the Migration and Development

Initiative for Region 1 (MDI-1). It’s a regional initiative to work with governments for

them to include migration and development in their local plans. For the past six months,

starting last year, we worked with them, not only with the local government units but

also with the migrant organizations and civil society organizations as well. We used

PESO Sense as a key component, as a main strategy, because we have seen that

there is a critical link between migration, remittances and development. Financial

education is a very important tool because as Bangko Central ng Pilipinas have said,

access to finance is not sufficient in its form, there must be an accompanying

educational component so that people would know how to make productive use of the

remittances that they are receiving. And so we worked with migrant organizations

organized by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.

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We emphasized in this MDI-1 project the convergence with other existing projects that

we have, either PESO Sense, BaLinkBayan, which is our one stop shop portal for

diaspora engagement, 1343 Actionline against Human Trafficking.

We also emphasized the importance of multi stakeholder partnerships either with the

migrant organizations, local government units or the civil society organizations working

at the ground.

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For the past six months, we did at least two regional trainings, not only for local public

officials but also for the civil society and academe counterparts as well. We did a

mainstreaming of migration and development in their local development plans.

Participants also include representatives of regional offices of national government

agencies like DOLE, POEA, OWWA and NEDA-1.

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Also, we collaborated with MDI Western Visayas in their Knowledge Exchange Summit

in the Calabarzon Region. This was held last November 2015, wherein they visited

institutions, whether public or private for the participants to have an idea of how other

areas are doing their migration and development activities. It was participated in by

select local government units, civil society organizations, migrants associations and

regional offices of national government agencies representatives from Region 1.

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Also because of these regional trainings, we were able to map out other migration and

development initiatives done at the local level. We find this literature very important

because there is an absence of local data on these initiatives. We’re quite pleased that

they have a lot of initiatives in the ground, not only bordering on the protection and

welfare but also economic services for their migrants as well.

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It’s not only Ilocos Norte that has ordinances pertaining to overseas Filipinos. The City

Government of Urdaneta, because of our engagement, has decided to pass an

ordinance declaring the first Friday of December as overseas Filipinos day. We’re also

happy to note that the province of Pangasinan has funded a local database on migration

initiatives on top of its other programs and services for the overseas Filipinos.

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And then let’s go over a rundown of the PESO Sense trainings we conducted in the last

quarter of 2015 covering the provinces of Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, La Union and

Pangasinan. To save on cost, we ask the cooperating units; let’s say school or local

government units if they can provide counterparts in terms of venue and invitation. At

the same time, because of the savings that we were able to generate and the generous

extension given by UNDP, we were able to branch out to the Cordillera Region,

specifically in Baguio City in January 2016.

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This is just the specifics of the trainings: In Ilocos Norte, we went to Mariano Marcos

State University. In Ilocos Sur we partnered with North Luzon Philippines State College,

San Luis National High School and Mangaldan National High School in Pangasinan and

Happy Hollows National High School and University of Baguio in Baguio. Majority of the

attendees are children of migrants. Even the president of the school was a former

immigrant herself. We also worked with the diocese of San Fernando, La Union. We

gave parishioners did PESO Sense training, too.

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On top of the PESO Sense trainings, we also did several forums on migration and

development, this time involving local migrant organizations, whether provincial, city or

municipal level. We also invited national government agencies catering to migrants to

serve as resource persons during the forums. At the same time, we included PESO

Sense so they can have an increased awareness on how to productively manage their

finances.

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In Ilocos Norte, it was hosted by the provincial government. And it was so far has the

highest number of attendees (200). In Ilocos Sur and Pangasinan, it was also hosted by

their provincial governments. In La Union, we conducted it in a hotel.

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Again, because of the savings that we were able to generate, we were able to host a

forum in Baguio City during the last week of January 2016. And that’s a total of five

trainings.

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At this point, I want to emphasize that because of the existence of the M&D initiatives in

Region 1, it is important that we continue our engagement and dialogue with them. And

at the same time, we must continue working with several stakeholders, church,

academe, civil society organizations, migrant organizations and the local government

units in all matters of migration and development.

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I just finished the first part of the three presentations for today. I will now turn you over

to Nico, for the last part of the accomplishment report.

Thank you.