Caraga’s SME Roving Academy trains PWDs

By Rennel C. Dalagan & Marson Jan S. Dolendo

BUTUAN CITY, Aug. 7 (PIA) -- Thirty-five persons with disability (PWDs) had undergone a series of technology demonstrations and specialized trainings as the first enrollees of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)’s Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Roving Academy.

The three-part training was conducted right after the formal launching of the SME Roving Academy (SRA) held recently in the region, in cooperation with the San Miguel Mills, Inc. and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

The sessions included Skills Training on Baking (Black Forest Bread, Cheese Stick Bread, Sweet Savory Bread and Ube Loaf); Product Pricing and Costing to allow participants to effectively compute the costs of their products and come up with reasonable and competitive prices; and Product Packaging and Labeling to teach participants the market trends in packaging and labeling they can apply on their products.

The activity came in the heels of the 35th celebration of the National Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation (NDPR) week. This year’s theme “Building an Inclusive and Non-Handicapping Environment for Persons with Disabilities,” aims for the effective integration of PWDs into the mainstream of society.

The SRA is one of the flagship programs of the agency conceptualized to be a continuous learning program for the development of micro, small, and medium enterprises to become competitive in the domestic and international (global) markets.

Through the SRA, the DTI, in partnership with the local government units (LGUs), chambers of commerce, academe, financial institutions, trade and industry associations and other government and non-government organizations hopes to facilitate not only the learning stages but also other support services to assist SMEs to grow from micro to small to medium and large should they desire to do so.

The SRA has seven learning stages, namely: start-up and capability building, market awareness, market readiness, export readiness, export market entry, export sustainability, and export expansion. (FEA/DTI-13/PIA-Caraga)