Work Trip up Northern Luzon

On Wednesday, Macel and I took a 9 hour bus ride up to the north of Luzon to undertake an informal monitoring visit with the Gender Resource Centres in Region 1. Gender Resource Centres are a mechanism developed by NCRFW to advocate and undertake gender mainstreaming at the regional and local level. There are 6 GRCs throughout the Philippines based in academic institutions and it is one of my primary responsibilities at NCRFW to assist in strengthening their capacities and to expand the GRC model to other areas in the Philippines. Since arriving at NCRFW I’ve done a lot of reading about GRCs, their limitations, problems and needs to be more effective. But this was the first opportunity that I had to talk to the GRC members in person.

We arrived in Vigan at about 7.30 at night and went to the University of the Northern Philippines where we were treated to a nice Illocano dinner of bangus (a common Pilipino fish), vegetables and rice. We were accommodated in the University guest house and I pretty much crashed out soon after dinner. The next morning we took a short tour of the university, visited their pottery school and then met up with other GRC members. I was predominately responsible for running the meeting with the GRC members which was basically a meeting to find out how the GRC was going, what kind of activities they were undertaking, problems their were facing, and what kind of vision they had for the future of their GRC – essentially for their sustainability. The discussion was to help Macel and I in helping to strategise in further supporting GRCs throughout the Philippines as their role is pretty important in assisting Local Government Units in integrating gender concerns in their local programs and activities. And of course, some GRCs have been more successful in this than others! It was a pretty successful meeting except for the fact that as an AusAID sponsored volunteer they thought I was going to able to bring some money to their operations – I think they also wanted some pretty concrete solutions to help them in their limitations. I tried to emphasise that they know the local situation, and had some pretty good solutions themselves, I just hope that it got through to them ok!

After some lunch we headed out to some local Barangays for a field visit. Most of the work that the GRC in Vigan is undertaking is research work on the role of women in various industries. First we went to a local meeting hall where women from various organisations were able to meet and discuss their activities, and where the GRC is able to share information on gender. We then went to some local pottery communities (Vigan is fairly well known for clay floor tiles and pottery products). The GRC was undertaking research on the role, income and division of labour in the pottery production industry. These were really poor households where women were undertaking highly labour intensive activities, fulfilling multiple roles and receiving low income for their productive work (about $20 a week). The GRC members talked to them about their business relationships, whether they were members of a co-operative (they weren’t – usually members of cooperatives in the area are able to share more in the profits of the sale of their products) and how much capital they had etc. It was pretty interesting.

Afterwards we headed back into Vigan town proper and visited Villa Angela – the ancestral home of the NCRFW Executive Director. It is an old Spanish colonial home. We then went to eat empanada – a local delicacy – like a deep fried spring roll type thing that looked like a pastie, but was filled with vegetables, egg and longganisa (Illocano sausage). We then hopped on another bus to head 4 hours south to San Fernando, La Union.

The next say in San Fernando I observed Macel give a workshop to local tourism workers on gender. It was an all day seminar aimed at increading their awareness of gender issues both in the workplace (like undertaking equal employment opportunities, being aware of gender divisions of labour in operation, and sexual harassment and predujices) and in the broader tourism industry (like issues of prostitution, portrayal of women in tourism marketing, people trafficking and how tourism may affect women more generally in the local community).

Once the workshop finished at about 4 we caught another bus (this time only 2 hours) to Bagio to start our time off for the weekend! Bagio post to come with pictures!

posted by batik billy @ 1:25 pm