6. Conclusion and recommendations
Survey results revealed positive changes on the socioeconomic status of disadvantaged women, as brought about by the Project interventions in selected coastal communities of Capiz and Pangasinan.
The provision of technical assistance such as training, family planning inputs , skills transfer activities as well as credit guarantee funds have enabled the disadvantaged women to engage in their own or additional economic activities and expand existing ones. By engaging in IGPs. the women were able to increase their contribution to total household income. Through the IGPs, the women have also demonstrated to be good business managers as well as excellent borrowers by virtue of low, if not negligible, loan defaults.
Also, the additional household income contributed by women have not only improved the household's propensity to save but also improve family welfare. It also strengthen women position in household decision-making including those with respect to family size.
With respect to other form of social gains, the Project has contributed to the enhancement of women's social position through building self-confidence and self-esteem, thereby contributed to improved relations in and outside the homes, benefitting their communities as well.
In order to further improve the efficiency of Project implementation and management, the following may be taken into consideration.
1. Extension or expansion of project to cover other areas such as other coastal barangays or upland areas in both provinces as project's impact is very much felt favourable.
2. Management of Guarantee Fund to be given to Provincial Governments after project life as per MOA between GOP and FAO. To sustain economic activities established under the project, the Guarantee Fund should be directly manage by established women group through the existing fund mechanism. Rural banks may be utilized to improve accessibilities.
3. Criteria for the selection of Project participants. The Project should continue to provide organizational and credit/loan assistance as well as family planning services to women who are interested or in need of these services. Through these services, the project is shown to contribute to the economic well-being of families and to the improvement of women's socio-economic status. To better delineate the economic impact of the project from its other social effects on women however, it is important to review the project's monitoring system and develop one that will allow for the easy assessment of project effects.
4. Strengthen commitment of LGUs. Welfare of staff should be given importance as human resources is a major factor toward the success of a project.
Prospects for continuity and sustainability of a project are enhanced when local staff as much as possible is permanently employed by the LGUs. This is to avoid local staff trained by the project be scattered when the project is terminated.
5. Resource management. Some women engaged in fish coral, etc. which can lead to depletion of fishery resources. There should be training on CRM not only for women but more so to their husbands and other fishermen in the area.
6. Continuous technical training to sustain women's economic activities and to give them opportunity for value added source of income.
7. Bank. Agreement with LOP seemed to be more advantageous as funds earned interest which could mean additional loan beneficiaries. Also, LBP provided technical assistance to WGs as their vision is toward countryside development.
8. There should be an annual Performance Assessment Workshop of all the project staff (both provinces) with key representatives from WGs in order to assess the project's efficiency in its implementation and achievement of objectives, the problems encountered and for both provinces to have sharing of experiences and strategies/approaches in project interventions.
9. Annual reports (including the annexes/attachments) should be standardized so that consolidation and comparative/trend analyst will be easily facilitated.
10. Conduct impact assessment or comparative study of all WGs (1st to 3rd batches) to gauge overall impact of the project. According to project staff, Batch 2 WGs are much better as project operations were refined unlike for batch 1 which was the initial stage where lots of problems were encountered.
11. Prepare a case study or a publication containing project approach/strategy achievements and experiences which can serve as reference or guidelines for replications and/or adoptions.
12. On "Consolidated Training Manual", it is recommended that funds be sourced to trim/refine, validate and pilot-test the manual in other areas by other agencies. By this, there will be long term evidence of project achievements and the project can have tangible contribution in CO and women development.
