The ESSA Iloilo City Cluster has been very fortunate to be able to meet and ground the intentions that were set during the National Conference. The output during the conference has now blossomed into a full blown proposal to encourage food growing and food sovereignty for the City of Iloilo. The proposal was patterned through Cafe-i’s “Building a Bayanihan Food Ecosystem Initiative” and with their help, certainly made the task easier for the Iloilo City Cluster.
The program is designed to have “Inner Conditioning” and 3-Folding (Politics, Business and Civil Society working together) at its core. The group also recognizes that this task, especially with the vision of scaling it up can only be achieved through working with others and the larger community of Iloilo City.
The objectives of the program are the following(draft):
- To build the capacity of the families in food growing
- to establish a communal garden for the community;
- to reframe the community’s view on what is food and nutrition that is grounded in Filipino culture and local indigenous crops.
- to develop capacities on food product development and marketing as an alternative income source,
- to establish a local vegetable market that incorporates bartering of goods or services and Bayanihan economics
- to establish food security and sovereignty, resilient to future food supply shocks; and
to shift to regenerative farming, maximizing agricultural impact
With all the restructuring and changes happening all over the world and in the country, ESSA hopes to play an active role in what is to be our new normal. Is it going to be a decadent world? Or a world the nourishes and supports the truly human in us?
This is ESSA Iloilo City Cluster’s little contribution to that new world.