BUTUAN CITY – A series of seminars preparing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) transition to digital media has been conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry here to its assisted Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organizations (ARBOs) under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) for July and August 2020.
Nine ARBOs from the municipalities of Buenavista, Nasipit, Jabonga, Santiago, and Las Nieves, including four ARBOs in Butuan City participated in the said seminar.
The recipients were the Manapa ARB and Community Coop of Manapa, Buenavista on July 3, De Oro ARP Coop of Butuan City on July 10, Culit MPC of Nasipt on July 9, Palmavera Small Coconut Farmers Beneficiaries Coop of Las Nieves, and Libas MPC of Jabonga on August 11-13.
Last August 18, the DTI-CARP Agusan del Norte invited Agrikultura Shop Online represented by Djon Scottie Amoc to orient and bring on board Butuanon ARBOs in their online marketplace during a meeting in Brgy. Sto Niño, Butuan City. This was attended by the Sto. Niño MPC, Duque ARB Cooperative, and Taguibo MPC.
A separate schedule for RIC Tagbuyacan was held last August 20 to complete the month’s target.
DTI-CARP ADN encouraged their ARBOpreneurs to cope with the current changes in doing business forced by COVID-19 through e-commerce to advertise one’s product and generate sales without doing it physically.
“There are many simple and free methods MSMEs here in the Philippines can do. One, which also serves as a stepping stone in understanding more E-business is making borderless market through Facebook (FB)-the most popular social media application which is now used also as an e-marketing platform,” DTI-CARP ADN further explained.
The mentioned ARBOs sell various food and non-food products such as lumpia, coconut oil, ube powder, organic rice, personal protective equipment, coco peat fertilizer, and organic beverages like turmeric and salabat. They are now starting to onboard their products to their own online marketing platforms they created.
The seminars reportedly provided additional lessons about various technology tools other than digital marketing that the ARBOs may integrate into their operation.
Some of those mentioned were e-payments, online advertising, online productivity tools, logistics, and many more.
Along with the learnings taught, AdN DTI-CARP also provided the participants with a prepaid wifi modem to help them eventually start their e-marketing operations. ♦
Date of Release: 10 September 2020