What’s waste for many can be gold for others. Farmers from Northern Samar and Bicol are learning how to turn the lowly coconut husk into a major source of income, with the help of non-government organizations in the area.
Veronica F. Villavicencio of the Peace and Equity Foundation explains how Filipinos can make money from coconut husks. Watch this video that I took during a recent Good News Kapihan press conference.
Some eye-popping figures came out of Cartoon Network’s latest study on Filipino children and their lifestyles.
P37 billion – spending power of kids in their “tweenies”, or kids seven to 14 years old
46% — of Filipino kids are now using the Internet versus 26% in the 2005 study
Being the jaded journalist that I am, I find myself cringing whenever I hear the phrase “Anything is possible.” It sounds too much like an opening speech gone bad.
Yesterday, I heard it again during a Go Negosyo even that I covered. This time, however, I couldn’t quite argue against the motherhood cliché with my usual skepticism. The subject of the speech spoke more than the three-word-phrase that I usually scoff at.
Picture this: five persons with disabilities who have successfully run their own businesses for many years against all odds.
Here’s the video I took of the press conference on muscovado sugar. Enjoy!
I have packs and packs of muscovado sugar in my kitchen. Some of them have been there for months! I buy them in the grocery store on moments I feel like “going organic” or “going green”. But I forget to use them or fail to tell the maids to use them. The distinct flavor that comes with the brown sweetness takes some getting used to, I guess.
But when I talked to muscovado sugar farmers at the Good News Kapihan yesterday, I realized that with all the chemicals used in making sugar come in white granules, we could be slowly putting in toxins in our body or killing the environment with pesticides. (Here’s an excerpt but you can read my entire article here.)
A lot of people use “sweetness” to get their way. For muscovado farmers Reynic S. Alo of Negros province and Cornelio E. Castañeda Jr. of Sultan Kudarat, it brought in money, a business that is not only good for the environment but also helps poor farmers in the countryside.
