BACOLOD CITY – The Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation Inc. (NWTF) is expanding to reach more women in the poorest and rural communities in the country.
NWTF officials said they plan to open 50 branches in Mindanao and Northern Luzon to complement their 252 branches in the Visayas and Northern Luzon.
NWTF said the expansion in Mindanao will help more rural communities. “Mindanao is a new area for us,” Raymond Serios, NWTF director for administration and strategic projects, said.
RAYMOND Serios, director for administration and strategic projects of Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation Inc. (NWTF), and founders Corazon Henares and Suzzette Gaston. (Glazyl Masculino)
The organization is targeting nearly 400 branches nationwide by next year with over 4,000 employees as part of their commitment to creating more sustainable communities.
Cecilia del Castillo, Corazon Henares, and Suzette Gaston, who were exposed to social work from feeding programs to educational TV in rural areas in Negros province, founded the NWTF in 1984.
Gaston, NWTF executive director, said that Del Castillo has been seeking to create a bank for women. “This is because if you help a woman, especially a mother, you will be helping not just herself, but the husband and the family,” Gaston said.
Before the birth of microfinancing, Gaston said they opened a cooperative for mother’s bakery. “The idea was good, but it did not work out very well because of financial struggles and other concerns,” she added.
Gaston said that they began their microfinancing journey when they learned about Muhammad Yunus’s Grameen (village) Bank established in 1983 in Bangladesh, which aims to give dignity to women by providing support for their small businesses or livelihood.
Yunus is an economist, entrepreneur, and currently a chief adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh.
They were able to connect with Yunus through the late Negros Occidental Gov. Daniel “Bitay” Lacson Jr. who attended a conference in New York in the 1980s.
“The idea is to always work with women – to enable them to achieve self-worth (dungog). It’s like giving them respect, value, and rights,” Gaston said.
Project Dungganon, a main product of NWTF, was then formed to help poor women from rural communities achieve self-reliance and rise above poverty by providing them with training and credit to start or maintain their own small business ventures.
Henares, Dungganon Bank Inc. (DBI) president, said that they are looking to improve the survival skills of their clients. “We help them to make their businesses grow and have a better life,” she said.
In 2023, the project catered to 532,691 active clients, with a total portfolio of P5.6 billion. About 70 percent of the clients are from the Visayas while others are from Northern Luzon.
The subsidiary of this project is DBI, a microfinance rural bank, which started in 1989, according to Serios. The bank provides relevant and professional banking services to the poor, including access to Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and POS (Point of Sales) machines in rural areas.
The project helps women discover their own entrepreneurial spirit and realize their potential to effect positive change by providing access to collateral-free credit through loans and other services.
“When we try to give Project Dungganon loan, it is as if we respect you, and you also honor commitment,” Gaston said.
However, Gaston said that access to financial assistance was not enough to empower women to move their families out of poverty. They realized that education and skills training are a fundamental service to provide to their clients to improve and grow their businesses.
In the past 39 years, Gaston said that they have innovated products and services geared toward the financial stability of their clients by providing them with access to working capital for their business endeavors while growing their knowledge base and skillsets through training, plus giving them access to healthcare.
Gaston said they are also concerned for the environment, encouraging clients to plant trees and vegetables around their homes.
In the 1980s, Serios said that non-government organizations (NGOs) were working toward increasing the income of men working in the fields during the sugar crisis. Women were unemployed and were just staying in their homes.
Serios said they started to help women and eventually expanded to the entire family. As they marked their 40th year, he said that they are also trying to expand it to the entire community. “Whatever is good for them and the family, we will continue with our goal and mission,” he added.
“We are thinking about the over-all well-being of our clients and their families, and what's best to improve their small businesses,” he said.
Serios said that microfinance is a new industry, and with their expansion, they are eyeing to help more women and their families.
As NWTF celebrates its 40th founding year, the NWTF was recognized for its significant contributions to enhancing the business climate and supporting MSME growth in its respective area of expertise. It was a milestone for the organization as it ramps up efforts to build more sustainable communities through microfinance, environment-conscious programs, and initiatives on preventive healthcare.
NWTF founder and Executive Director Suzzette Gaston (fourth from right) receives a Certificate of Presidential Recognition for Outstanding Development Partners for improving access to finance under their Project Dungganon from President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in Malacañang on July 10. (DTI photo)
Last July, Gaston, accompanied by NWTF Director of Operations Gilbert Maramba, received a Certificate of Presidential Recognition from President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. for being an Outstanding Development Partner in Improving Access to Finance Category for their Project Dungganon in a ceremony in Malacañang.
Gaston said that they did not expect such recognition. “We just tried to hold the business summit, but it worked out and it became successful,” she added.
The organization has served 601,969 clients last year in medical missions, telemedicine, clinics, X-ray, dental missions, and other activities conducted by the Client Wellness Department. The organization had 5,054 Dungganon scholars since 2014.
Serios said that they have also served more than 1,000 college scholars and also give partial scholarships to senior high school students.
The NWTF has started the “one million trees and counting campaign” which aims to protect the environment through tree-planting. This aligns with national and local initiatives and supports the National Greening Program and Republic Act 11292 or “The Seal of the Good Local Governance Act of 2010” that emphasize environmental management and green space development.
Since the environment is leading towards food security, Serios said that they have encouraged their clients to start planting in their backyards and were educated on how to care for the environment.
With all of their initiatives to help poor communities, Serios said that they want not just their clients to benefit from their services but also the communities they live in. “Our goal is to find a way to ensure that this is not just day-to-day survival, but goes beyond that,” he added.