By: Mayta Banday and Evelyn Sumacbay
With the completion of the multi-million contract, we ventured on equally important internal tasks. In line with our Five-Year Development Plan, we conducted trainings on organizational development and skills upgrading specifically on basic cooperative management in six MCs namely, SIKAP, FARAD, SAFRA, ADAP, ADPI and MKMK.
The trainings certainly created a positive impact on our MCs. Members were further enlightened on their responsibilities, rights and authority in their cooperatives. After the trainings, some cooperatives settled their organizational problems and came up with operational guidelines to improve their operation while one cooperative re-organized its structure. Among our findings was that there are some officers who took advantage of their position. To this writing, another cooperative, the KAMCC-MPC, is scheduled for basic Cooperative management Training.
From January 2006 up to July 2006 we conducted an evaluation and assessment on the above-mentioned cooperatives in coordination with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) to find out whether the recommendations during the training were or are being implemented.
A Team-Building workshop was also conducted among the Board of Directors and the staff of the Federation last July 9, 2006. The activity coincided with the 8th Anniversary of the registration of our Federation. This very meaningful workshop was held at the Regional Educational Learning Center in Marikina City.
The initial positive impact of the trainings shows that regular training-education sessions must be built-in components of cooperative and federation-building along with our efforts at the economic aspect. Indeed, “human beings do not live by bread alone…” as they also have to work on their holistic development and well-being and aspire for the finer points in life.