Juanita Celiz at her home in Barangay Luhib with the burner she uses to cook food and to process crops into value-added products.

One fateful day in 2020, Juanita Celiz, 51, tripped and fell. While this may have been just a simple accident for most people, this wasn’t the case for Juanita. Besides fracturing her back, follow-up consultations with a number of doctors and myriad of further tests revealed a far more chilling finding: she had pancreatic cancer. It was December 2021 when she found out, and doctors told her that she only had three more months to live. Talk about a Christmas bummer.

Fast forward to six months later. Juanita is happily looking forward to celebrating her 52nd birthday. She has obviously surpassed her doctors’ predictions, and despite her still being immobile due to her condition, her passion to help her fellow community members is stronger than ever. You see, apart from being a farmer, Juanita also serves as her village’s cluster manager of the Lake Sebu Indigenous Women and Farmers Association (LASIWFA) in Barangay Luhib, Lake Sebu, South Cotabato, a province in Southern Philippines.

LASIWFA was formed through the ‘Dynamic Conservation and Sustainable Use of Agrobiodiversity in Traditional Agro-Ecosystems of the Philippines’ project (ABD Project), an initiative co-implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Philippine government through the Department of Agriculture – Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR) and supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Lake Sebu, in which Juanita’s village of Luhib is located, is one of the project’s covered sites.

Juanita, while bedridden, remains active in capacitating her association members in maximizing the use of agrobiodiversity crops – tomatoes, taro, and Cardava bananas – that are found in abundance in Luhib. She trains them in processing the crops into value-added products, which are sold at prices higher than when selling the crops as raw materials. She is set on passing on her own culinary skills, as well as those that she gained from various trainings, including from the ABD Project, to those who are willing to take up the mantle.

“Gumagana pa utak ko tsaka mga kamay ko. Kunin niyo talent ko [My mind and my hands are still functional. Use my talent],” she said.

Besides the younger members of their cluster, Juanita is also concerned about the children in their village. “Sayang ang raw materials, napapabayaan lang. Sayang din na napapabayaan lang mga bata bumili ng junk food [It would be a shame if our raw materials would go to waste. It would also be a shame to let children buy junk food],” she said, adding that she prepares her grandchild’s snacks for school herself. She also attributes her recovery to eating indigenous food.

Juanita shared that she called a meeting with her cluster members almost immediately after she returned home from her hospital stint and a brief stay with relatives in Sultan Kudarat to recover. She once again opened the doors of her home, which served as the learning site of all five LASIWFA clusters, to members so she can train them in food processing.

Because of her absence and the pandemic, her cluster dialled down its processing activities. Upon her return, she told her cluster, ‘Hindi ba kayo nahiya sa akin? Hindi nga gumagalaw mga paa ko tapos nagluluto ako [Aren’t you ashamed? I may not be able to move my legs but I can still cook].” She rolls a bottle underneath her feet as exercise while she cooks or trains the other processors.

Juanita's cluster has now grown from seven members in 2019 to 28, six of whom are youths from indigenous peoples groups. The association has also been able to access additional support from government agencies such as training, capital, small tools, planting materials, pre- and post-harvest facilities, and processing equipment.

Because of LASIWFA’s success, its officers are now being invited to talk and participate in events funded by different government agencies, with some even elected into positions in federated organisations of small and medium enterprises in South Cotabato.
LASIWFA has also participated in local, regional, and national trade fairs and expositions funded by government and private institutions. As the movement restrictions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic eased, the members are now seeing an uptick in their product sales and subsequent increase in their incomes, which are helping them with their household expenses.

At the moment, some of the project-provided processing tools and equipment have been temporarily moved to Juanita’s home so she can continue training the LASIWFA’s Luhib cluster.

Once their processing skills are up to par, the group plans to maximise the use of their processing facility, which was built through the partnership of the ABD Project and the provincial local government of South Cotabato. The land was provided by the cluster as their counterpart contribution to the project. Juanita’s daughter, on the other hand, has personally committed to have a paved path laid from the barangay’s main road to the processing facility so that her mother could easily come and go even while in her wheelchair.

With support from the ABD Project, the cluster is set to partner with the Sultan Kudarat State University for additional capacity building on the processing of their agrobiodiversity products. The partnership will also link the group to possible sources of additional processing equipment. Their plan is to learn how to prepare cookies using taro and banana flour and fresh milk, as they were also able to tap the assistance of the Philippine Carabao Center to get tools and equipment for dairy products.

“Ang tulong na ito para sa young generation namin [This is for our younger generation],” Juanita says. Pinondohan na namin kayo ng lupa, tinulungan na tayo sa building. Hindi na namin kakayanin ito kasi matanda na kami, kaya kayo na [We provided the land, we got assistance for the building. We will no longer be able to use this because we are already old, so this is yours],” she added, addressing the young members of the cluster.

Despite her deteriorating health, Juanita’s passion and mission to leave a legacy for the young of Luhib and to see her community succeed continue to propel her forward despite her predicament.

Now THAT’S dedication.