San Jose de Buenavista vies for second Galing Pook Award

The Municipality of San Jose de Buenavista is vying for its second Galing Pook Ten Outstanding Local Governance Programs. The Municipality’s Farmville project was shortlisted for site validation in this year’s national search for innovative practices of local government units.

In 1999, San Jose de Buenavista already won the award for its Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) scheme in rebuilding its town public market -- now San Jose Business Park, razed by fire.

This 2015, Mayor Rony L. Molina is hopeful that San Jose de Buenavista will clinch another Galing Pook Award with Farmville. Farmville is an integrated farm owned and managed by the local government unit inspired by a popular farming simulation game on a popular social media networking platform. The project aims to establish an environment-friendly integrated model farm which shall serve as a show window for technology transfer to encourage take up of modern farming techniques and make farming relevant to the young generation.

Galing Pook Award is a program that recognizes innovation and excellence in local governance. Selection of winners is based on positive results and impact, promotion of people’s participation and empowerment, innovation, transferability and sustainability, and efficacy of service delivery.

Site validation is on June 23-24, 2015. 

San Jose dB, DOT train site guides for town's main attractions

The local government of San Jose de Buenavista in partnership with the Department of Tourism (DOT) conducted a tourist reception and basic tour guiding techniques seminar.

According to DOT, The seminar was designed to develop and improve the performance of front-liners in rendering first rate professional service in the tourism industry.

Moreover, the LGU hopes to improve the service in its main tourist attractions - Farmville and the Marine Protected Area especially the Coastal Resource Management (CRM) Mini Galley.

Farmville is an LGU-owned demo farm for integrated organic farming, which offers tour, lectures and training on organic farming techniques.

The CRM Mini Galley offers discovery tour of the marine ecosystem and environmental protection and conservation while the Marine Protected Area is open for snorkeling activities thru the CRM Mini Galley.

Participants from allied services such as accommodation establishments and souvenir/ craft shop also attended the training.

On the last day of the training, a mock tour was conducted to assess the compentency of the participants.

Mayor Rony Molina hopes to conduct tourist reception training to tricycle and jeepney drivers in the Municipality. 

Farmville hosts training on food processing for women

San Jose LGU's Farmville hosted a three-day training on food processing and fishery product development.

The training was organized by the Municipal Agriculture Office of San Jose de Buenavista,  under the helm of OIC-Municipal Agriculture Officer Florante Q. Moscoso, in partnership with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources - Regional Fisheries Training Center.

Participants of the training were from barangays San Pedro and Mojon. They were women who are already into cooking and food processing and were identified through their punong barangays.

San Pedro and Mojon were chosen for there is no existing Rural Improvement Club (RIC) organized in the area.

The technology transfer training aims to increase productivity of the agri-fishery sector and encourage self-sustained growth. At the same time, aims to organize the women into an RIC.

Aside from learning different methods and principles of preservation and processing of various farm products, the participants were taught gender and development concepts and issues and were introduced to basic entrepreneurship.

Farmville is a one-hectare demo farm of the municipal government, located in Sitio Lugutan of San Pedro, using the Integrated Framing Approach and focused on organic farming. It is a venue for learning and center of technology transfer for farmers and students.