2015 CITIZENSHIP AWARD
Contributing to both member’s welfare and community development
Composed of more than 117,000 members, the Tagum Cooperative is a large cooperative with an equally large yearly net-surplus income that it allocates to its Community Development Programs and Projects.
In particular, the Cooperative’s Education, Community Development Program (ECDP) Section implements various programs and activities that support the community. These include scholarships for 10 bright but financially challenged students, vocational training for 60 beneficiaries, school supplies for more than 2,000 indigent students in 22 schools, cleaning materials to 91 partner schools, an alternate learning system or back-to-school program for out-of-school youth, and a literacy program for adults. The Tagum Cooperative also supports a nutrition program for school children, free cholesterol screening for senior citizens and free medical check-ups for indigenous families. It also helped finance the repair and construction of schools and churches.
The Tagum Cooperative also supports a nutrition program for school children, free cholesterol screening for senior citizens and free medical check-ups for indigenous families. It also helped finance the repair and construction of schools and churches.
For its members, the Tagum Cooperative offers womb-to-tomb services: such as savings programs for the young, credit and insurance services for the adults, and mortuary benefits for bereaved families. Its Savings and Credit with Education program conducts livelihood trainings for its members. The goods produced by their livelihood trainees are sold in the cooperative’s “Partner sa Kabuhayan Store” in the Tagum City Public Market.
The Tagum Cooperative also put up in-house facilities to serve its members. It maintains a function hall for trainings and conferences, a clinic for the Himsug Pamilya Program which looks after the health needs of its members, and a nursing station for lactating mothers. For its tricycle driver members, the cooperative put up a special booth where the tricycle drivers can deposit their savings or loan payment under the Pabilising Savings para sa mga Drivers Advocacy (PaSaDa) program.
Future cooperative leaders of Tagum Cooperative are also being groomed through its TC Youth Laboratory Cooperative, which was launched in October 19, 2009. The laboratory teaches junior members, which number about 52,000, on how to manage and operate a regular cooperative, and how to operationalize the principles of financial management, planning and budgeting.
Impressed with the achievements of Tagum Cooperative, delegations from other cooperatives in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao have visited Tagum Cooperative to learn about best practices in cooperative governance and financial literacy. Tagum Cooperative has come very close to the realization of its vision of becoming “the best one stop shop for total member care” and becoming an “icon of economic, social and spiritual transformation for families, communities and society.”