The Step-Up team facilitates the Annual Review and Planning of the Immaculate Conception Parish Pastoral Plan on 15 July 2023.
The sessions aim to reaffirm the vision, mission, and goals, of the parish as articulated in its Parish Pastoral Plan, assess the implementation of the Parish Pastoral Plan for 2022 to 2023 and identify accomplishments, gaps, and opportunities for improvement and plan the activities for 2023-2024.
The workshop was able to determine the importance of collective contributions to shared goals, celebrate the accomplishments, and be inspired to plan for the future and share the joy with parish workers and volunteers in discussing parish priorities in a safe, welcoming, and empowering environment.
Msgr. Harold Anthony S. Parilla, thanked the team for facilitating the workshop and for reviewing the implementation of the plan. He also encouraged parishioners to continue pursuing planned activities to achieve shared goals.
Step Up facilitates a Strategic Planning Workshop for Buon Pastore Cooperative, a Loboc-based cooperative on March 11, 2023, at the Loboc Tourism Hall. The workshop brought together board members, staff and employees of the cooperative. The sessions delved into various facets crucial for developing robust business strategies, particularly in the cooperative’s current business ventures – trading, gasoline, and quarry business.
The Buon Pastore Cooperative is established to mobilize capital from among all residents of Loboc to provide the needs of Lobocanos and the province to include providing market linkage to residents’ products and services, thereby catalyzing growth and development in the service areas. Since its establishment as a cooperative, Buon Pastore has incessantly empowered leaders through capacity-building training and workshops that develop their entrepreneurial and business skills. Maximizing local resources and opening business opportunities, Buon Pastore endeavours to grow as a cooperative where membership continues to thrive towards economic development.
The workshop’s agenda focused on fostering a forward-thinking mindset, emphasizing the significance of anticipating industry trends and leveraging innovative approaches to stay agile amidst uncertainties.
Participants engaged in dynamic discussions, collaborative exercises, and insightful presentations that explored elements such as goal setting, market analysis, risk assessment, and resource allocation. Through interactive group activities and real-world case studies, attendees were encouraged to apply strategic frameworks tailored to their unique business contexts.
The focus is to meet the needs of the community; thus, the Cooperative’s projects involve bringing to the global market its virgin coconut oil, trading, gas station and quarry operations. The purpose of the Cooperative is both inclusive and expansive to answer the growing needs of the community.
The success and positive reception of this workshop have sparked discussions about potential future sessions and continued collaborative efforts among local businesses to drive collective growth and innovation. The team also assisted the cooperative in crafting their 3-year Strategic Plan.
Step Up Consulting Services conducted a series of workshops to capacitate the men and women of Calunasan, Calape Bohol who are involved in making charcoal briquettes.
Through the grant provided by the farm which the family through its CEO Ms Joy Pulchra Ofamen-Sarabia, the briquette processing equipment and machinery are shared with 40 families who are now engaged in briquette making using cacao pods and other farm organic wastes that could otherwise end up polluting the environment. The briquettes provide access to alternative and cheaper form of energy over wood, burns cleaner firewood and release fewer greenhouse gases.
The team conducted a series of training workshops on business development, costing and pricing, workflow management system, enterprise models, and marketing to make their briquette products commercially viable and sustainable. These workshops were held beginning November 2022 and will continue towards the first quarter of the next year.
The Ofamen Cacao Farm in Calunasan, Calape, Bohol is a recipient of the WHWise: i B L E n D N I C E 4WomEn*, a program launched by the Department of Science and Technology- Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development l in partnership with Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT). MSU IIT is the program’s main implementer in collaboration with Miriam College (MC) and the University of the Philippines – Mindanao (UP-Min).
*WHWise: i B L E n D N I C E 4WomEn (innovation thru Building and Leveraging Entrepreneurship Development, Networking and Inclusive Community Engagement for Women Entrepreneurs) or Women-Helping-Women: Innovating Social Enterprises, is a program that brings together government agencies and private organizations to seek out and prepare women-led social enterprises for growth, scalability, and subsequent Venture Capitalist funding. The program provides a suite of services, including early-stage funding, training, skills development, mentorship, and business incubation. More importantly, it will provide access to technology to enable even women from rural communities to be part of the global economy.
Step Up completes almost 3 months of strategy sessions with Sinar Project of Malaysia to finalize the organization’s five-year strategic plan. The final Strategy Session with Sinar was conducted on 28 April 2022 online, with key officers of the organization.
Sinar Project was formally established in 2014 as a limited liability partnership in Malaysia. From its very inception, the organization aimed to promote transparency, accountability, and openness in government by improving people’s access to public information and data that impact people’s lives. Sinar Project believes that when citizens have greater access to data and information they are able to demand accountability from the government, better participate in decision-making processes involving public welfare, and contribute to the overall well-being of society.
Step Up’s strategy advisor, Michael P. Canares, was the lead consultant hired by East West Management Institute to undertake the strategy planning process.
Step Up’s strategy advisor, Michael Canares, was contracted by Common Ground Consulting to train civil society organizations (CSOs) on monitoring, evaluation, and learning. The training, which was held on 15-18 February 2022 via Zoom, is part of the various training programs conducted for Ugandan CSOs by the Civil Society Strengthening Activity (CSSA) training program funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
Twenty-two CSOs attended the training. The cohort included representatives from the Uganda Women’s Network, the National Coalition for Human Rights Defenders, White Ribbon Alliance, Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group, ICT Policy Center for Eastern and Southern Africa, among others.
Synchronous sessions took place from 1 to 5 pm Uganda time (5 to 10 pm Philippine time). Asynchronous sessions, on the other hand, took place every morning of each day through organization-based assignments that are required to be presented during the synchronous sessions each day.
The participants appreciated the training design and delivery. At the end of the training, most of them were excited to use their knowledge to improve the M&E systems of their organizations.
Step Up’s strategy advisor, Mr. Michael Canares, facilitated the ASEAN kick-off workshop on strengthening Labour Market Information Systems (LMIS) as a basis for better skills and employment policies. The workshop, attended by 9 countries across the ASEAN region, was held online last 9 December 2021.
The workshop is part of the project aimed at strengthening the capacities of ASEAN member states to anticipate and match future skills needs through effective labour market information systems, develop a set of evidence-based recommendations in selected thematic areas with the objective to facilitate policy dialogue; and develop national action plans for improvement of the labour market information systems.
The workshop was organized to level-off expectations and understanding from among key stakeholders and agree on the principles, guidelines, and procedures for the conduct of project. This also includes, among others, an agreement of the desired goals of the project, an agreed set of indicators to gauge progress, and the roles and contributions of each stakeholder.
The workshop was sponsored by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA) of the Government of Vietnam. GIZ and ILO lead the implementation of the project.
Step Up Consulting strategy advisor was invited by the Provincial Government of Negros Oriental to conduct a training on Local Road Asset Management for the members of its local road network management committee. The training was conducted online last October 29-November 5, 2021.
The participants comprised of representatives from the provincial offices of engineering, accounting, planning and development, budget, treasury, internal audit, general services, and assessor. The training was based entirely on the Local Road Asset Management Manual (see picture above) prepared by Mr. Michael Canares for the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) with funding and technical support from the United Nations Development Program.
On 16 November 2020, DILG Secretary Eduardo Ano issued DILG Memorandum Circular 2020-155 mandating the adoption of the Local Road Asset Management Manual by local government units. This aims to improve the valuation and recording of local road assets for better local road management.
Mr. Michael Canares, Strategy Advisor of Step Up Consulting will be the moderator of the upcoming ASEAN Conference on Policy and Governance for Climate-Smart Land Use. The conference is organized by the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through the Deutsche Gesellschaft for Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). GIZ collaborates with the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and several other partner organisations to hold this conference.
The conference will be held online on 16-18 November 2021. The conference will tackle three themes, namely:
a. Multi-level Governance for Climate-Smart Land Use
b. Inclusive and Participatory Policy Making for Promotion and Adoption of Climate-Smart Land Use
c. Enabling environment for private investments into Climate-Smart Land Use
The conference is expected to attract policy-makers from ASEAN member states working in the fishery, agriculture, and forestry sectors, rural development and environmental activists, development agencies, research institutions and civil society organisations from across the region.
Michael Canares, strategy advisor of Step Up Consulting was invited by the Municipality of Catigbian to facilitate the Gender and Development (GAD) planning and budgeting workshop for 2022. The activity was held at the Bohol Bee Farm Resort in Dauis, Bohol last March 3-5, 2021, and was attended by department heads and key officials of the municipality as well as representatives from civil society groups.
The workshop was held after a series of sessions on gender sensitivity, the Magna Carta of Women, Gender Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, and Gender Analysis Tools facilitated by several resource persons, including Step Up’s gender expert, Ester Espinosa.
In the workshop, Mr. Canares emphasized the essential elements of GAD Planning and Budgeting, namely, GAD focal point system (GPFS), GAD capacity development, gender audit, and GAD database and sex-disaggregated data. He advised the municipality stakeholders that if these elements are not yet present, they should invest considerable resources to have these in place. For example, he emphasized that without a GAD database, the identification and analysis of gender issues will be difficult.
Vice Mayor Esteban Angilan Jr. in his closing remarks, encouraged the stakeholders present to consciously monitor the plans and programs they were able to identify during the workshop to ensure that this will result to concrete benefits to the people of the municipality.
Michael Canares, Strategy Advisor of Step Up Consulting, was contracted by the Build for Skills Project to help design and facilitate a lessons-harvesting workshop to reflect on the two-years of project implementation in Mongolia and Pakistan. Build4Skills is a project jointly implemented by GIZ and the Asian Development Bank to sustainably improve vocational education and training in countries. It aims to integrate technical and vocational education and training as a standard in public invitations to tender for infrastructure projects over the long term.
The workshop was conducted over two days – from September 14 to 15, via MS Teams. In attendance were representatives from GIZ operating units in Germany, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Philippines, together with their ADB counterparts from the Philippines, Mongolia and Pakistan. The first day workshop was organized as an internal learning event while the second workshop was designed as a sharing event to other development partners who may be interested to use Build4Skills as an approach in promoting employment through technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in partnership with country governments, funding agencies, private companies, and TVET institutions.
Step Up Consulting 