Study Trip to the Philippines

When August is on the horizon, life in Japan starts getting sweaty with its hot and humid weather. Universities ease this pain by providing summer vacation mostly from the first week of August. Summer vacation of 2016 became a memorable experience for us because we got an opportunity to visit Visayan areas of the Philippines for a field based research activity.

We flew to Cebu on 13th August. Our objectives were very diverse depending on the type of institution/place we were planning to visit. We visited six organizations/places within our stay of 2 weeks:

  1. Halo Halo Microfinance: This institution is supporting fishermen communities by providing loans to buy and repair boats. Fishermen were found to be happy to receive such support. However, some beneficiaries not paying back the loans is a huge hurdle for the institution.
  1. Department of Energy: Visayas field office of DOE is located in Cebu. We visited this organization to understand the scenario of current rural electrification programs undertaken by the government of The Philippines. Currently, they have two major programs of rural electrification: Household electrification program funded by its government and Rural power projects funded by World Bank. Moreover, we learned about various aspects of implementing any renewable energy project: making proposals, donor support, bidding, tender, vendors, installation, monitoring, inspection etc.
  1. Pangan-an Island: This island is located at 45 mins distance from Cebu by boat. We visited here to observe the present status of community based solar power plant installed in 1999 by Belgian government. Unfortunately, the power plant was already shut down because of budget deficit for maintenance and a diesel generator is supplying the electricity at present.
  1. Alumar Island: Located at distance of 3 hours by boat from Cebu, this island consists of 228 households with fishing and seaweed farming as primary occupations. Our purpose of visit was to make a hearing survey with 50 households of Solar Home System users regarding its use, satisfaction and problems being occurred. Interview with fee collector revealed that most of the people have stopped paying their monthly fee. The grid electricity had started its operation from the day we arrived in this island. What will happen to solar home systems after this has been a curiosity for both users and electric cooperative.
  1. Caubian Island: This island was found to be very successful in operating and maintaining the Solar Home Systems among 425 households. From the interview with cooperative, we learned that having a robust system which can be easily handled by the local people and proper fee collection strategy were the factors of success in this island.
  2. Fab Lab: Fabrication Laboratory belongs to the Department of Trade and Industry of Bohol Island State University. This lab is equipped with various cutting-edge equipment like 3D Printer, Digital Sewing Machine, Laser Printer, Cutting and Milling Machines. In developing countries where a lot of works are still manual, these technologies not only replace but improve the production. They produced several souvenirs and even built a small house. They have a dream of building a school utilizing their equipment.study-part1

Thanksgiving Time! We would like to express our deep gratitude to Taki Foundation Grant for Overseas Study Trip for the financial support, Abe Sensei for being our mentor, Dr. William Hong for continuous guidance and care, Mam Lourdes Arciaga for permitting us to visit DOE and facilitating our panel discussion, our coordinator Mr. Roldan and his wife for their parental love and company, and all the kind and lovely people we met in our whole trip for interacting with us enthusiastically making our trip highly educational. With no doubt, the field visit based learning experience has the greatest impact on our knowledge and understanding.

~Kes