The Community Crafts Association of the Philippines, Inc. (CCAP) through its Executive Director, Voltaire P. Alferez, lauds the Duterte administration’s pro-people program of government particularly in ensuring that all communities are resilient to disasters and the impacts of climate change.
“Pres. Duterte’s pronouncement in his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday to prioritize pro-people programs particularly in ensuring that communities are resilient to the impacts of disasters and climate change in the country bodes well for the many communities who live through the very environment where they are located,” said Mr. Alferez. “It gives us hope in CCAP’s mission to ensure that these communities have alternative sources of income through community-based livelihood initiatives,” he added.
For more than four (4) decades, Community Crafts Association of the Philippines, Inc. (CCAP) and its subsidiary CCAP Fairtrade for Development, Inc. (CCAP Fairtrade) have assisted marginalized handicraft producers through product design and development and exporting their handicrafts to Fair Trade buyers abroad. Quite recently, it opened its domestic line under the brand name, Likhang Atin by CCAP Fairtrade.
Furthermore, Mr. Alferez calls on the administration to include livelihood development in any resilience-building plan. He emphasizes that a pre-disaster resilience-building initiative will be more responsive by having a livelihood development component for the communities.
Towards this end, CCAP launches its Business Development Services Program where CCAP and its experts in business and entrepreneurial development and related aspects will provide assistance to community organizations, non-government organizations, funding agencies, corporations and government agencies to help in developing and strengthening livelihoods of communities, partners or beneficiaries. Moreover, CCAP could provide for a market for handicraft products as long as said products are compliant to Fair Trade standards which CCAP is ready to assist the producers.#
“The idea is to draw out from our decades of experience in community-based livelihood development and apply DRR-CCA principle in the process so that said livelihood activities could be easily revived if and when a disaster strikes in a particular area,” explained Mr. Alferez. He notes that in this way, while rebuilding is being done, a possible source of income could be tapped in addition to the different strategies in rehabilitation such as cash for work, among others.”
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