The STRIVE Philippines Project, an initiative of Action for Enterprise (AFE), aims to improve child well-being by strategically linking small producers in poor coastal communities with key market actors in other parts of appropriate value chains. AFE anticipates that these linkages will help increase household income among coastal communities and reduce the economic vulnerability of the families and children who live there.
Coastal communities are among the poorest in the Philippines and rely on sea-based resources such as seaweed farming and fishing for their livelihoods. It is estimated that more than half of seaweed farmers live at or below the poverty line, despite the fact that the Philippines is a major global supplier of seaweed for the production of carrageenan, an extract that is widely used as a thickener, stabilizer, and gelling agent. Many coastal households have little or no access to agricultural land and so must rely on cash income to purchase food and meet their basic needs. When cash flow comes up short, families’ food, healthcare and education expenditures suffer.
The STRIVE Philippines Project interventions center on market-based solutions that contribute to the competitiveness of industries in coastal communities. These interventions will include:
- encouraging suppliers and processing firms to invest in new production areas and techniques,
- expanding and strengthening market linkages,
- improving information flow among actors and between levels of the value chain, and
- supporting research and pilot activities to identify innovative, sustainable solutions to current obstacles to high-quality production.
By facilitating these activities with existing actors, the project aims to achieve sustainable improvements in production, leading to increases in household income.
STRIVE Philippines will work with a Project Advisory Committee comprised of leading child-focused organizations in the Philippines to ensure that increased household incomes result in reduced vulnerability among children and youth in targeted coastal communities. STRIVE Philippines is one of five initiatives under the AED STRIVE Program exploring effective means of reducing the vulnerability of children and youth through economic strengthening.
Henry Panlibuton
Chief of Party, Philippines
Action for Enterprise
2009 N. 14th Street, Suite 301
Arlington, VA 22201 USA
henry@actionforenterprise.org
- July 2008 to December 2011
