Cagayan de Oro City — Everyday is a chance to fulfill and achieve one’s dream.

This is true to the life of a Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Pantawid Pamilya) beneficiary here as she tries to realize her dream business.

Georgy Sosobrado, 39 of Phase 3 Macanhan, Carmen this city, said she complements the meager income of her husband, Anecito, who is a multicab driver, through her tailoring shop.

Despite operating for only four months now, Georgy is not new to the business as she earned her skills in cutting, designing, and sewing from her mother who is also helping her at the shop.

Out of the nine siblings, only Georgy followed the footsteps of her mother who is always at the shop to help carry-out her dream business.

Georgy started to establish her tailoring shop specializing on curtains, pillow, eco-bag, bead works, gowns, among others October last year when she and fourteen members of Faithfulness Macanhan 4Ps SEA Kaunlaran Association availed of the P150,000 loan from the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Trainings

Georgy, who is blessed with six children, can still manage to do some household chores and care for her family after a hard day’s work.

She disclosed that she learned how to manage her time after she underwent trainings on management with the SLP when her group availed of the benefits of the program.

Aside from this, she also learned management of a business during Family Development Sessions of Pantawid Pamilya.

This leader of the SKA of SLP is also the Parent Leader of Cluster 3 of Carmen this city.

Georgy also pointed out the importance of learnings from her trainings under SLP and Department of Trade and Industry because her group has to earn in order to pay the P5,000 monthly rental of space of her shop located along the bustling Vamenta Boulevard, Barangay Carmen here.

DTI taught the group of Georgy and other SKAs of SLP in packaging their products, ensuring quality and durability so that they can earn patronage of their customers.

But she quickly added that it is the informal training she got from her mother, who taught her perseverance and determination in all circumstances at young age, inspired her to continue to look for other effective in rearing her children.

Innovative

Since not all 25 members of her group know how to sew, design, and cut textiles for clothing, Georgy assigned 21 of them to canvass and promote the tailoring shops to prospective customers in schools and other agencies of the government.

This strategy, she said, can attract prospective customers to avail of their services.

She found it effective way of luring customers that resulted in growing income of their business.

However, Georgy lamented that only eight members of her group are religiously looking for orders from customers.

Lately this month, the city government of Cagayan de Oro brought samples of their eco-bags during the CDO Business Forum in Makati City.
The Field Office of DSWD, through SLP, has also linked them to the Department of Tourism for possible market of their bead works as it is good for pasalubongs (token).

For now, all she can do is to continue to manage and operate the business with unceasing determination to boost everyone’s income of her group.

SLP is a community-based capacity building program of DSWD that seeks to improve the socio-economic status of program participants. It is implemented through the Community-Driven Enterprise Development (CDED) approach, which equips the program participants to actively contribute to production and labor markets by making use of available resources and accessible markets.

On the other hand, Pantawid Pamilya is the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program of government implemented by the DSWD so that families are able to get financial assistance, provided they comply with certain conditions imposed by Pantawid Pamilya, which include seeing to the health and education needs of their children. (Written by Oliver Badel Inodeo, Pantawid Pamilya Information Officer)

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