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On December 01, 2007, the Periurban Vegetable Project in cooperation with the city government of Cagayan de Oro and its community partners organized the "4th Cagayan de Oro Allotment Garden Day" at the AVR 1, Old Library Bldg., Xavier University Campus, as part of the Xavier Festival Days 2007.
More than 100 persons attended the event, including gardeners of the different allotment gardens of the city, students from Lapasan National Highschool with their teacher Jimboy Eugenio (at the same time one of the allotment gardeners),as well as the special guests Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe, (Director of Agriculture, Western Province, Sri Lanka), Mr. K.V.S. Prasad (AME Foundation, Bangalore, India), Dr. Robert Simmons (Coodinator of RUAF CFF Program South and Southeast Asia), Mr. Robert Gensch and Horacio Factura III (GTZ Germany), representatives from the City Government of Cagayan de Oro and Xavier University.
The celebration, which followed the theme of the Xavier Festival Days "Molding Minds, Forming Hearts, Serving Others" started with a warm welcome by Mrs. Estrella Borja, Associate Dean for Social Outreach of XU’s College of Agriculture, and an inspiring keynote address by Dr. Anselmo Mercado, former College Dean and Director of SEARSOLIN, who connected the work of St. Francis Xavier to the asset-based driven development applied in the allotment gardens of Cagayan de Oro.
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The intermission number, a love song presented by Mr. Dominic Rafaran, a XU student and member of the Ateneo Diplomatic Corps, resulted in cheers and overwhelming applause of the audience.
A slideshow reflected the past ten years of PUVeP's activities (1997-2007), and focused particularly on the establishment of allotment gardens in the city since 2003. Messages of the different stakeholders of the allotment garden progam were given by the City Government of Cagayan de Oro (Ms. Joeclyn M. Salcedo, CLENRO), the partner barangays (Hon. Hermelando Bautista, Barangay Kauswagan), the partner schools, (Ms. Nora Alinsub, Balulang Elementary School) the "Cities Farming for the Future Program" of the party poker bonus code (Dr. Robert Simmons), and the German Technical Corporation (Mr. Horacio S. Factura III).
Thereafter, the members of the newly launched "RUAF Christa Holtz Allotment Garden", located in sitio Tibasak, Macasandig, were introduced to their fellow gardeners and delighted the audience with two songs.
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The event culminated with the "Best Allotment Garden of Cagayan de Oro City Award", which went for a 3rd time in a row to the Beatrice Niehoff Allotment Garden of Macasandig, while the "Best Allotment Gardener of Cagayan de Oro City Award" was bestowed to Mr. Luminoso Rosal from St. Niño Allotment Garden, Lapasan. |
As in previous years, the Allotment Garden Day ended with the joint singing of the "Impossible Dream", the favorite song of Fr. William F. Masterson SJ, the founder of the College of Agriculture. Social development starts with singing as he used to say.
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On November 30, 2007, the "RUAF Christa Holtz Allotment Garden" was officially launched at the Material Recovery Facility Area, Sitio Tibasak in barangay Macasandig, Cagayan de Oro City.
This allotment garden is the 8th allotment garden of Cagayan de Oro City and the 2nd in barangay Macasandig. Financial assistance for establishing the garden was provided by the Cities Farming for the Future Program of the RUAF Foundation as well as Mrs. Christa Holtz, a German citizen. The garden is maintained by 11 urban poor families who mainly hail from the nearby resettlement area.
The event started with an invocation and National Anthem was led by Robert Punay, one of new allotment gardeners, followed by introduction of participants done by Elmer G. Elorde Jr., the PUVeP technician in charge for setting up the garden after Clarito A. Santos left for Germany last October 2007.
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Since 1997, PUVeP has implemented numerous research and social outreach projects. A summary list of these projects can be downloaded here.
PUVeP served as the main coordinator for following European Union funded projects: |
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