The morning starts early in Lapuyan, Zamboanga del Sur, a municipality of more than 24,000 locals. While majority of the locals prepare to tend their fields and ready their nets, Glicerio Lucrecia busies himself typing letters in his chunky typewriter. He had already written three, he still has two more letters to go.
The task would have been easy if he had been using both hands. But anyone who knows Lucrecia or Nono would understand why such a simple task is an ordeal: he has no right arm.
Despite this, he continues to write letters addressed to various government officers and politicians. The aim is to seek support or funds for his new cooperative. Lucrecia had placed all the money he had saved for the requirements. But for it to continue operating, it needs a credit line.
“I want to help my community. There are so many problems, so many people who are seeking help. I don’t care if the letters got disapproved or not, I just want to voice it out,” Lucrecia states stubbornly.
From Lapuyan to Jeddah
Life was never easy for Lucrecia. He came from a poor family in a dead-end town in Zamboanga del Sur. He studied basic education in the nearby Lapuyan Central Elementary School but continued his secondary education at the Sacred Heart Academy in Cagayan de Oro City.
“My eldest brother needed a house help so I went to live with him,” Lucrecia narrates. He is the youngest child in a brood of five. He later on received full scholarship from the Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology where he took up an electronics engineering course.
Although he had a scholarship, Lucrecia worked at the Filipinas Esion Manufacturing Corp from nine in the evening to five in the morning. His classes started at eight in the morning and lasted until five in the afternoon. After earning his degree, he worked in the same corporation as a plant technician.
Even with a job, life was still hard and his salary was not enough. He then applied as an electronics engineer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and worked abroad for three years.
Unfortunately, he met an accident that resulted in the amputation of his right arm. Lucrecia’s employer asked him to stay for a year to process his insurance. At the height of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, he finally decided to go home.
“The war showed no sign of stopping and Kuwait was already invaded by the Iraqi forces. I decided to go home instead of staying because there was unrest and worry in the air,” Lucrecia says.
Back in his hometown
Fresh from abroad, Lucrecia became his neighbors’ source of support. “It was normal for people to ask help from someone who worked abroad. And I realized that in the three years I had stayed in Saudi, nothing much had changed—people still live in poverty.”
While tending the farm land he inherited, Lucrecia taught electronics to a group of 100 students. But at the end of the training, only five students successfully finished the course. The reason was simple, says Lucrecia, these students had to tend to their farms especially during the harvest season.
Lapuyan is a municipality of landowners. It is composed of 26 barangays, majority being farmers. Despite being an agricultural community, the locals are not used to working in their fields, notes Lucrecia.
“They instead focused on their families and it became big despite their impoverished states,” narrates Lucrecia.
Likewise, Lapuyan was a poor municipality. The programs of the government seldom reach the people. Often, the programs are not sustainable and are not enough to uplift people from poverty. Lapuyan is one of the poorest municipalities in Zamboanga del Sur. And the province is one of the poorest provinces in the country.
Thinking that politics could enable him to serve his community better, he ran as a councilor in the Sangguniang Barangay. He won and later on ran for a seat in the municipal council. He stayed in the position for three terms.
Lucrecia eventually ran as vice-mayor but was defeated because of lack of funds and the bitter reality of the campaign ground. “Lapuyan is a poor community so many voters would gladly sell their votes for a few hundreds.”
‘I have the desire to help’
While he was a councilor, he started the concept of a multi-purpose cooperative in Lapuyan--the Lapuyan Multi-purpose Cooperative (LAPMUCO) in 2000. Aside from being an acronym, LAPMUCO came from the Suganen words which stresses the desire to help a person in need. Majority of the locals in Lapuyan are from the Suganen minorities.
Lucrecia used all his savings for the initial building requirements of the cooperative. Since it started, he had avidly written to various officials and agencies seeking funding support. His stubbornness paid off when he received a credit line worth P200,000 pesos from Land Bank of the Philippines, through recommendations from Sen. Loren Legarda.
But things didn’t go smoothly afterwards, there were still issues being thrown at Lucrecia because he was a public servant at that time. “Nobody believed my cause. They think it was all for propaganda.”
Thriving cooperative
Despite the initial hesitation from the community, LAPMUCO has been thriving due to Lucrecia’s persistence. From the 75 active members, the cooperative currently has 800 members.
Of the 24 registered cooperatives in 2000, only two survived: LAPMUCO and another DAR-assisted cooperative. Lucrecia’s baby became the only NGO-assisted cooperative in the municipality. When LAPMUCO started, it only had an initial capital of P30,000. Now, it has over P1.4 million and has assets that amount to over P9 million.
“What is important is how you handle the money,” says Lucrecia. He also mentioned experiencing bottlenecks in choosing employees. “We can’t pay give them a big salary and there are applicants who are not qualified for the job.”
Lucrecia didn’t get anything from LAPMUCO for six years. His staff used to get only P300 salary per month for a year. The amount escalated to P5,000 a month but it was still not enough to sustain a family’s needs.
Even his family could not understand why he gives too much effort to his cooperative when there are numerous ones already in the field. His wife would often berate him for putting his money in LAPMUCO rather than buying shampoo.
Redeeming loaned land
Aside from providing loans, Lucrecia also gives advice on agriculture and coordinates with rice and corn farmers on the status of their harvests. “We have discussions where we strategize how to go about the farming. Rice and corn are the riskiest to plant.” Lucrecia owns eight hectares of land in Lapuyan, a tract of land he inherited from his parents.
As much as his farm is important for Lucrecia, it was also important to the rest of his fellow farmers. “Their land is the only treasure for the people of Lapuyan, but due to financial necessities, some are forced to pawn their land.”
According to Lucrecia, when land is pawned to a private institution, the harvest of the land becomes the property and source of profit of the institution. The farmers can only get back the land if they paid their loans in full after two or three years.
These transactions lessen the possibility of farmers redeeming their lands.
With LAPMUCO, farmers are given the money to buy off the land from the institutions and loan sharks. The land will then be under the cooperative, explains Lucrecia.
Instead of the harvest going to LAPMUCO, farmers still hold the rights to the harvests. The money from the harvests will then be paid to the cooperative. “The loans are transferred to LAPMUCO but there is a bigger chance of them redeeming the land,” states Lucrecia.
Losing his hand not his life
One might ask how Lucrecia managed to overcome depression when he lost his arm. The answer is simple: there were more important problems to solve and people to help.
“Many people ask for sustainable help. And I get fulfillment in helping people. Not only do they earn money, they regain hope despite the very hard life here,” shares Lucrecia, who still lives in a run-down house and a simple lifestyle in Lapuyan.
”When I lost my hand, I didn’t mourn the fact that I lost a part of myself. Instead, I appreciated what I have. I’m still alive and I'm still trying my best to help my neighbors,” Luceria beams.
And yes, Nono still uses the same noisy typewriter to write his letters.
___________________________
Glicerio ‘Nono’ Lucrecia was one of the five finalists of the Ramon Aboitiz Award for Exemplary Individual in the Visayas and Mindanao for the 4th Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc Triennial Awards held in Cebu City on March 6, 2009. Photo courtesy of RAFI. Read original article here.
No comments:
Post a Comment