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Stakeholders in the seventh district of Cebu Province have identified agriculture and tourism sites that should be prioritized as part of the development strategies in the area.

The Integrated Area Development Program of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI-IAD) focal team gathered in a workshop to deliberate and consolidate all pre-identified assets or two prioritized thematic areas of development in the district last March 19, 2018. This was based on the IAD Ad Hoc Council meeting last February 8, 2018 where the Project Management Unit (PMU) agreed that agriculture and tourism are two of the main economic drivers for development of the district.

The workshop was facilitated by the IAD Team of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI) and attended by the planning and development coordinators, engineers, tourism officers, agriculturist, and councilors of each town in the seventh district. Representatives from the  Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO), Provincial Tourism, Office of the Provincial Agriculture, and Provincial Engineering Office were also present.

One of the highlights of the workshop was the “district hat” making where the focal teams created their own hats and wore these in choosing the most valuable assets in the district. A “dotmocracy” method was used in the workshop where the total dots per identified site was counted.

They also used validation templates and survey tools to determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of the identified sites.

A plenary discussion was also conducted to shortlist and finalize the output of the focal team. As a result, two maps were produced containing the list of prioritized assets for both agriculture and tourism sites. They also agreed on the schedule for the actual site validation for agriculture and tourism sites.  Through the workshop, the focal team learned the value of partnership and understood the need for a district-wide development.

Site validation

The asset site validation started ran from the third week of March up to the first week of April, and involved activities like data gathering, surveys, and interviews.

One of its outputs is the geo-tagged map generated with help of the PPDO. The map includes photos of the validated sites for agriculture and tourism.

The IAD validating team also drafted a SWOT analysis per local government unit and gathered survey forms for agriculture and tourism sites. These will be consolidated and presented to the Project Management Unit as reference for the district visioning and strategic planning scheduled in the first week of June.

The Integrated Area Development Program of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI-IAD) provides Local Government Units (LGUs) with technical assistance towards socio-economic development.