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Inside AGREA's two-day Eco-Processing Futures workshop in Del Carmen, Siargao: coconut by-products, baliw fibre, banana leaves, and textile waste as enterprise. The eighty percent Siargao grows coconut on more than half its land area. Roughly 17,971 farmers are registered on the island, and most of them sell copra — the dried coconut meat — and little else. According to the International Labour Organization, more than 80 percent of coconut by-products on Siargao go to waste,

AGREA's two-day workshop in Del Carmen brought Mamanwa artisans together with People's Organizations to work on circular business models, packaging, and branding for indigenous weaving. The material comes first Before a woven bag is a product, it is a plant. In Surigao del Norte, one of the fibres Mamanwa weavers work with is baliw — a local plant material abundant in the province and used as the primary material for traditional weaving into bags, baskets, and other handicraf

From Bitoon to Halian, AGREA's three-day organic agriculture and natural farming visitation crossed four barangays in Del Carmen with MAFO and iLAJA. The barangay that needs a boat Halian sits off the coast of Del Carmen, on Siargao's western edge, across water that has to be crossed. It is a small island community of roughly eleven hundred people, most of them dependent on fishing, and until recently its power came from a community generator that ran for a few hours each eve