Mainit and Sison LGUs Conduct Gender-Responsive Value Chain Analysis
Mainit, Surigao del Norte–Local governments of Surigao del Norte municipalities of Mainit and Sison jointly conducted a three-day Gender Responsive Value Chain Analysis (GR-VCA) of women-led enterprises last October 2014 in Mainit. GR-VCA is a specific capacity development intervention by the Philippine Commission on Women-AECID MCW Project for women’s economic empowerment that helps stakeholders gain understanding where women are involved, and how they benefit or are adversely affected by interventions along the chain.
The PCW-AECID MCW Project engages pilot local government units, like the municipality of Mainit and Sison, that will mainstream gender, specifically Magna Carta of Women provisions in local governance. Local partnership engagements were designed to extend capacity development, technical and funding support to pilot LGUs that will craft and implement gender-responsive policies, plans, programs and activities for women’s economic empowerment and women’s social rights.
Rebecca Cormanes, resource speaker discussing the outputs of the participants 
Participants brainstorm to identify the input, production, transformation, trade and market of their product
Gender-responsive Value Chain Analysis (VCA) focuses on creating gender-responsive value within the chain, rationally distributing benefits among women and men producers, processors, and traders. Local technical working groups, 30 sayongsong producers from Mainit, and 14 women mushroom producers from Sison participated in the GR-VCA training. Rebecca Cormanes, an expert of GR-VCA from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-Leyte served as the resource person.
The GR-VCA training resulted in participants defining their value chain roles, while taking into account facilitators and barriers to value-chain development. Gender-based interventions, such as time management of women between reproductive and productive activities, mobility of women to explore new markets, women’s participation in decisionmaking on income and use of negotiating skills within the household, were considered in upscaling value chain.
The GR-VCA training generated a GR-VCA map that helps local government units and other national government agencies in setting priority interventions for enhancing product competitiveness of sayongsong and mushroom enterprises. Convergence activities with the DTI, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Agriculture, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, Department of Science and Technology are also expected to emerge as a GR-VCA training outcome.
A related Gendered Enterprise Baseline Survey for Product-Based Value Chain is also providing agency and local partners contextual information for potential convergence partners.
Mainit and Sison LGUs are optimistic that GR-VCA will yield a public-private partnership, wherein investment opportunities for agriculture-based processing enterprises could ultimately lead to empowering local women-led enterprises.
