Benilda “Tita Beng” Alfariz

Benilda Alafriz or “Tita Beng” as her friends would call her is from Davao City. She grew up with his father and they eventually moved to Pampanga. She met her significant other, got married and had two sons. Like her parents’ fate, she and her husband had a failed marriage. During the time her husband left her, Tita Beng was pregnant with their second child. From then on, she had to raise her children on her own.

Her Water Bonsai story dates back to the time when she was the President of the Parents-Teachers Association in her son’s school. Realizing that she was from a less privileged family, City Tourism Regional Director Ronaldo Tiotuico suggested a Water Bonsai livelihood project to Tita Beng’s PTA group to help augment their income. From there, they started to learn on how to make Water Bonsai with the help of their mentor, Edwin Dela Torre.

It was in 2014 when Tita Beng decided to start making her own Water Bonsai. She felt like she needed to turn her hobby into business as she needed to have additional income for her family. She registered her business and named it “Ugat Enterprises”. She met Darby Raul L. Bognot of DTI Pampanga and asked him for assistance. Through Mr. Bognot, she eventually started joining various seminars and trade fairs where she became a regular exhibitor and client of DTI. She also became a member of PAMSE (Pampanga Association of Micro and Small Enterprises) in 2016. She also joined the Kapatid Mentor ME Program. She also availed of Product Development assistance from which she obtained prototypes of her products. All of these greatly contributed to the progress of her business.

Tita Beng said that she learned a lot from the KMME Program and that it really helped her market her products and achieve her target sales. Because of all her learning, she was able to get a big company as her regular client. She also gained other individual clients who got bulk orders from her.

Prototypes of Ugat Enterprises

Aside from selling her products, she also gets additional income by conducting trainings or demonstration on Water Bonsai making during the Likha ng Central Luzon Trade Fair and the DTI CARP exhibits.

Last year, she included cactus and succulent as her new product variants. With the variety of new products and learnings she acquired from Kapatid Mentor Me Program, she had a year-end sales increase of 50% from combined Cash, Booked and Under Negotiation sales.♦