Financial Literacy for Women Farmers in Upi: Inside Module 2 with the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women Agriculture Cooperative

Twenty-six members of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women Agriculture Cooperative in Rempes, Upi completed Module 2 on financial literacy and management under the AGREA–WFP collaboration.

A session about numbers that belong to real households

On June 4, 2026, 26 women from the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women Agriculture Cooperative (KBWAC) gathered in Rempes, Upi, Maguindanao del Norte for Module 2: Financial Literacy and Management.

The topics were unglamorous by design: budgeting, savings, cash flow, profit computation, and simple record-keeping. These are the mechanics of managing money, not the grand strategy of enterprise development, but the daily discipline that determines whether an enterprise survives.

The session used hands-on exercises and group activities rather than lectures alone. Participants worked through the arithmetic of their own households and enterprises, practising how to track what comes in, what goes out, and what remains. The purpose was not to turn farmers into accountants. It was to give them a working command of the numbers that shape their decisions.

Why this matters for a women’s agriculture cooperative

Rempes is one of the larger barangays in Upi, a municipality in Maguindanao del Norte with a multicultural community of Maguindanaon, Teduray indigenous people, and Christian settlers. The barangay has a population of 5,029, according to the 2020 Census, and its local economy is supported by agriculture; rice, corn, vegetables, rubber, and coconut, alongside livestock raising and trade. The area includes highland terrain and parts of the Teduray ancestral domain.

Upi is also home to many Teduray women farmers. Reporting on the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Sustainable Livelihood Program in 2023 noted that most of the 198 Upi residents who received livelihood assistance were ethnic Teduray women whose husbands relied mainly on short-cycle crops and hybrid corn, and who worked occasionally as labourers on larger farms.

That context shapes what financial literacy means in practice. Agricultural income is lumpy: it arrives at harvest, not in a steady monthly flow. Household expenses do not wait for harvest. A cooperative that cannot track its cash flow will struggle to time purchases, pay its members, or set aside reserves for the lean months. A farmer who cannot compute profit accurately may not know whether a particular crop or product is actually earning money or merely generating activity.

Record-keeping carries a second, institutional function. Cooperatives seeking to link their production to reliable markets—a core objective of the broader WFP-supported project in BARMM, need records that buyers, lenders, and government agencies can trust. A cooperative without books is a cooperative that cannot demonstrate its performance, access credit, or negotiate from a position of knowledge. Financial literacy is therefore not a soft add-on to agricultural training. It is part of the infrastructure that makes market participation possible.

The cooperative and its place in the module series

The KBWAC session is the second module in a learning series conducted through the continuing collaboration of AGREA Foundation and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). Module 1, held with a different cooperative in Maguindanao del Sur, focused on revisiting enterprise aspirations and on “Hiraya Manawari”, the Filipino phrase for the hopes and dreams one wishes to see fulfilled. That session asked why the enterprise exists and what its members hope it will become.

Module 2 addresses the question that follows: if that is what the enterprise is for, how does it manage its resources well enough to get there? Vision without financial discipline remains aspiration. Financial discipline without vision produces efficient activity with no direction. The sequencing is deliberate.

The module series sits within a broader project: Empowering Indigenous Women through Nutrition-sensitive Interventions and Agriculture Livelihoods Support towards Improved Food and Nutrition Security and Climate Resilience. The project is funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) with a contribution of PHP 45 million (approximately USD 780,000), implemented by WFP, and aims to reach 28,000 people from Indigenous and rural communities across BARMM.

Under the project, rural and Indigenous women undergo training in climate-resilient agriculture and leadership skills. The project also aims to strengthen women’s cooperatives by linking their agricultural production to reliable markets, and it incorporates social and behavior change activities to improve local food and nutrition practices.

The rationale for focusing on women is documented. A 2024 WFP study, Leaving No One Behind, found that barriers such as climate-related risks hinder rural and Indigenous women from accessing resources and decision-making processes, resulting in lost livelihood opportunities and poverty. Financial literacy training addresses one dimension of that exclusion: the practical capacity to manage, track, and control the resources a household or enterprise already has, and to make the case for more.

What the participants said

The session’s most direct evidence of its effect comes from one of its participants.

“Malaki ang natutunan ko sa session na ito patungkol sa Financial Literacy at record keeping, natutunan ko ang kahalagahan ng wastong paghawak ng pera at disiplina. Natutunan ko na kahit maliit na ipon ay maaaring lumaki sa paglipas ng panahon at makakatulong sa oras ng mga hindi inaasahang pangyayari. Dahil sa session na ito, mas naeengganyo akong maging responsable sa pamamahala ng pananalapi ng aming pamilya.”

Mary Grace Macatong, a member of KBWAC, described learning the importance of handling money properly and with discipline, understanding that even small savings can grow over time and help during unexpected events, and feeling more motivated to be responsible in managing her family’s finances.

The statement is modest and specific. It does not claim that the cooperative has reorganised its finances or that household incomes have risen. It describes a shift in understanding and intention, the recognition that small, consistent savings function as a buffer, and that discipline in handling money is a skill rather than a personality trait.

That is the realistic yield of a one-day financial literacy session. The question that follows is whether the intention is converted into practice.

What the session does not yet prove

Twenty-six women completing a module on budgeting and record-keeping is an input. It is not evidence that household budgets have changed, that cooperative records are now maintained consistently, or that savings have increased.

Those outcomes depend on several conditions: whether participants have the materials and time to keep records, whether the cooperative’s leadership reinforces the practices, whether the numbers involved are large enough to make formal tracking worthwhile, and whether the broader project provides follow-up support in the months after the session.

The WFP-supported project’s market-linkage component creates a practical test. As the cooperative engages more directly with buyers and with government programs, its financial records will either become an asset, evidence of performance that strengthens its negotiating position—or a gap that limits what it can access. The training introduced the skill. The market will test whether it is used.

What comes next

For the 26 participants, the immediate next step is to apply the practices at the smallest useful scale: a household cash record, a simple savings plan, a written computation of what a particular crop or product actually earns after costs. Small, consistent practice is how financial discipline becomes habitual rather than theoretical.

For the cooperative, the next step is to decide whether record-keeping becomes a shared institutional practice—with a designated bookkeeper, a standard format, and regular reporting to members—rather than an individual habit that varies by member.

For AGREA Foundation and WFP, the next step is to continue the module series and to track whether the financial practices introduced are adopted and sustained. That tracking should be honest about what changes and what does not.

We are glad to have been part of this session alongside the women of the Kuliglig Bangsamoro Women Agriculture Cooperative and our partners at the World Food Programme. The measure of the training will be in the ledgers, budgets, and decisions that follow—not in the certificate of attendance.

To learn more about AGREA Foundation’s work with women’s cooperatives in BARMM and its partnership with the World Food Programme, explore our official channels. Organisations interested in supporting this work can reach out through our contact page.