Tags: Agribusiness
By KC Santos
ILIGAN CITY, LANAO DEL NORTE – Most foreigners come to the country to retire or take a vacation. Not so for social entrepreneur Tom O’Brien, who chose to stay in the country to seek change within himself.
A former stair-builder from Illinois, Tom sought and found spiritual stillness in a land with a people and culture that were completely unfamiliar to him. With wife Michelle, he joined the Maranao Ministry of Iligan, a move which showed him all the right reasons to stay for good.
In his years of immersing with the community of Maranaos in the mountains, Tom not only became fluent in the Visayan and Maranao dialects, but also explored the people’s innate skills and how this can be used to maximize the bounty of their land.
With help from the Department of Agriculture, Tom made it his mission to develop an agricultural program for the Maranao community.
Alongside agricultural activities such as rice planting and goat-raising, the couple set-up small pharmacies and scattered six of these in the mountain ranges of Iligan.
The Maranao staff, who they trained to man these mini -”botikas” or drugstores, eventually became instrumental when they established Perfectly Natural Herbs in 2005.
Applying traditional planting methods, Tom narrowed his list of herbs to talabonga, tanglad, lagundi, sambong, malunggay and ampalaya. Tom says this improved not only the local’s perspective in earning but also making such herbs recognizable toward the export market.
With help from a company from the Netherlands, the organically grown herbs were formulated and packaged in tea bags and capsules, which introduced the benefits of organic indigenous plants to the international market.
Whatever the company made went to the sustenance of Tom’s ministry projects such as a missionary school, mobile clinic units, and a new innovation in making hollow blocks.
Iligan as a city was once feared for its insurgency problems. Tom says the effect of these problems has inculcated among its people violence and hate. These are the exact attributes which Tom aims to change by engaging them in productive activities.
“Their culture is full of hate and it’s disheartening to so little hope among them. I hope to see a change in them through continuous livelihood projects without stripping them off of the free time to enjoy life.”
Get more information about Perfectly Natural Herbs
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