Two Municipalities, One National Shortlist: Del Carmen and Matanog at the 2026 Galing Pook Awards

Del Carmen's FARM-TO-SPOON won its third Galing Pook Award, while Matanog's WOW-Matanog reached the national finalists. What each result means.

A morning at Malacañang, and a list of nineteen

On 21 October 2026, in the Ceremonial Hall of Malacañang Palace, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. conferred the 2026 Galing Pook Awards. Ten local governance programs received plaques and ₱300,000 each from the Department of the Interior and Local Government. The ceremony fell within Local Government Month, under the theme "Islands of Hope: Local Innovations, National Inspiration."

The field behind those ten was not small. The search drew 208 program entries from 148 local government units nationwide. Of these, 207 were deemed eligible, 34 were shortlisted for field validation, and 19 advanced to the finals to present before the Board of Judges.

Two of those nineteen matter to us. The Municipality of Del Carmen in Surigao del Norte went on to win — its third Galing Pook Award. The Municipality of Matanog in Maguindanao del Norte reached the national shortlist and did not appear in the final ten.

Both results deserve to be described accurately, which is the purpose of this article. A finalist placing and a Top 10 win are different achievements, and the difference is not a disappointment. It is a measurement of a very competitive field.

What the Galing Pook Awards measure

The Galing Pook Awards were launched in 1993 and mark more than three decades of recognising local governance innovation. The selection process evaluates programs on results, people's participation and empowerment, innovation and adaptation, resilience, sustainability, and transferability.

That criteria set explains why the awards function as something more than a ceremony. A program is not assessed only on whether it delivered, but on whether communities co-own it, whether it can survive a change in leadership, and whether another local government could learn from it. The award is, in effect, a judgment about replicability.

President Marcos framed the evening in those terms. "Ito ang diwa ng Galing Pook Awards — na kilalanin ang mga lokal na pamahalaang tumutugon sa mga hamon at nakakahanap ng makabuluhang paraan upang mapagaan ang buhay ng kanilang mga kinasasakupan," he said in his keynote message. Addressing the awardees, he added: "The beauty of innovation is that there is always room for improvement… As the needs of our communities continue to evolve, so must the solutions that we provide."

Del Carmen: a third award, and what FARM-TO-SPOON actually is

Del Carmen's 2026 entry was FARM-TO-SPOON, and it was named one of the Ten Outstanding Local Governance Programs.

The acronym is doing a lot of work. FARM TO SPOON stands for Fishery and Agriculture Resiliency Management Through Outstanding Sustainable Policies and Participatory Oversight and Ownership. The expansion is worth knowing, because it describes the program's design more precisely than the shorthand does: policies, oversight, and ownership are in the name alongside fishery and agriculture.

The program's mechanics are documented. It links smallholder farmers and artisanal fisherfolk directly to institutional buyers, public school feeding programs, and community kitchens. By bypassing intermediary traders, it aims to secure fair farm-gate prices for producers while delivering affordable, nutrient-rich local food to households and targeted feeding sites.

Alongside the market linkage, the municipality legislated a community savings group policy described as the first of its kind in the country, producing savings groups across its barangays. Farmers and fisherfolk were connected to health insurance, crop insurance, micro-life insurance, and pension mechanisms. Former illegal fishers were engaged as Bantay Dagat personnel, converting resource users into enforcement partners. The municipality's mangrove reserve was recognised as a Ramsar Site — a wetland of international importance — and now sits alongside four marine sanctuaries.

The reported outcomes are specific: malnutrition falling below one percent and stunting below three percent, alongside a shift in the municipality's income classification. Those figures represent years of work across nutrition, livelihood, and environmental management rather than a single campaign, and they should be read as the municipal government's reported results rather than as an independent evaluation.

Galing Pook evaluators, according to Inquirer's account, underscored the program's community ownership, its multisectoral partnerships with national agencies including the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Social Welfare and Development, and tangible reductions in municipal food vulnerability.

Three awards, three different programs

What distinguishes Del Carmen's record is that the three awards were not given for the same work repeated.

The municipality first won in 2018 with "Siargao It Up!", an initiative that integrated mangrove management with social tourism. It won again in 2023 for the Seal of Health Governance, a local health leadership approach developed as a response from the pandemic to Super Typhoon Odette. The 2026 award is for FARM-TO-SPOON, a food security and social protection program.

Three awards, three program areas — tourism and mangrove management, health governance, and food systems. That progression is the more interesting fact than the number three. It suggests a local government capable of building a new program once the previous one has been institutionalised, rather than defending a single achievement.

Mayor Alfredo M. Coro II received the award and dedicated it to the people of Del Carmen. "The program on Farm-to-Spoon is about people whose community farms strengthen resilience and food security," he said. "They are empowered with social protection through community savings groups that fund dreams, sustain ecosystems, and where they collaborate for policies. Our goal is to ensure that every farmer and fisherfolk, every family who depends on them, has a present and a future to look forward to, on their own terms and based on their aspirations."

He also noted that Siargao continues to balance rapid tourism growth with environmental conservation. PIA records that Del Carmen was the first local government unit in the Caraga region to earn this recognition for its winning flagship initiative.

The 2026 award follows the program's inclusion in the Top 10 outstanding entries at the national Walang Gutom Awards in May 2026 — a separate evaluation framework reaching a consistent conclusion.

Matanog: a national finalist, and what "WOW" stands for

Matanog's entry, WOW-Matanog, was among the 19 national finalists. It was not among the final ten.

That outcome should be stated without softening, because the achievement it represents is real and does not depend on inflation. Matanog is a coastal municipality on Illana Bay in Maguindanao del Norte, with eight barangays and a population of 36,034, known for fishing and as a gateway to the Lake Lanao region. It is a fifth-class municipality in a region that has contended with conflict and displacement for decades. For a town of that size and profile to place among the 19 programs selected from 148 LGUs nationwide is a national-level result.

The name carries history. WOW stands for Women of War — an organisation that began in 2013 with 35 women and has since grown to roughly 250 members. Reporting from 2016 described the group as having helped turn the reputation of Matanog and Marayag Lake from a place to avoid into a peaceful tourist haven. Its members have included former women combatants, and it has been the beneficiary of livelihood and craft training delivered with partners including PhilKOFA, with more than 70 former women combatants participating in skills training.

The program has since expanded into economic territory. In November 2025, the Bangsamoro Government held the conference and groundbreaking ceremony for the WOW–Matanog Special Economic Zone and the Bangsamoro Halal Park. The zone has been described as the first JAKIM-certified halal economic zone and the first officially established special economic zone in BARMM. In November 2025, foreign investors formalised commitments to the zone and the halal park.

Mayor Zohria Saglayan Bansil-Guro, who has led the municipality through this period, described the community's and leadership's willingness to open the Iranun Corridor to investors as the catalyst for the development. She has also been part of a local government fellowship programme run by the Galing Pook Foundation with The Asia Foundation and the UK Government — a detail worth noting, because it means the municipality's engagement with Galing Pook predates this competition.

The brief characterises WOW-Matanog as "an innovative local governance program for women and children." The women's organisation and its trajectory are documented. The specific scope of the program as submitted to Galing Pook — including any dedicated children's component — was not published in the sources reviewed, and this article does not describe it beyond what is verified.

What the two results say together

Read side by side, the two outcomes describe the same thing from different angles.

Del Carmen's win demonstrates what sustained institutional work looks like when a municipality has the stability to build program after program. Three awards across three different sectors over eight years is not a lucky sequence. It is the compound return on a governance culture.

Matanog's finalist placing demonstrates something different and, in the BARMM context, arguably harder. A fifth-class coastal municipality in a region historically associated with conflict produced a program that survived national validation and stood before the Board of Judges alongside Baguio, Quezon City, Iloilo, Valenzuela, and Bataan. That is not a consolation prize. It is evidence that the evaluation criteria — participation, empowerment, innovation, resilience, transferability — can recognise work that began with 35 women in a place others had written off.

Awards do not create that work. They occasionally notice it.

Where AGREA sits in this

We are a development partner of the Municipality of Matanog, and we have worked alongside the Municipality of Del Carmen and its communities for years — through the SPACES Project, through circular economy and livelihood initiatives with iLAJA, and through the engagements that produced the FARM-TO-SPOON approach.

The temptation in a piece like this is to claim a share of the credit. We will not. The Galing Pook Awards are conferred on local governments for programs that local governments and their communities built. Del Carmen's FARM-TO-SPOON and Matanog's WOW-Matanog were designed, legislated, and implemented by municipal governments, with civil society organisations, national agencies, and communities as collaborators. Our contribution has been one among many, and the awards belong to the people who did the work.

What we can say is that both results validate a conviction we hold: that the local level is where development commitments become real or remain abstract. A national framework for food security does not feed anyone. A municipal savings group policy does.

What the awards do and do not measure

A Galing Pook Award is not a certification that a municipality has solved its problems. Del Carmen's reported malnutrition and stunting figures, while striking, describe a municipality that remains exposed to typhoons, tourism pressure, and the market volatility that comes with island geography. Matanog's finalist placing does not change the conditions that made its women's organisation necessary in the first place — displacement, conflict, and limited economic opportunity.

The awards also do not measure what happens next. A program can win and then stagnate. It can be sustained by a single champion and collapse when that champion leaves. The criteria include sustainability and transferability for exactly this reason, but an evaluation at a point in time cannot guarantee either.

What the awards do provide is a signal — to other local governments, to national agencies, and to the communities themselves — that a particular way of working is worth studying. Whether anyone studies it is a separate question.

What comes next

For Del Carmen, the next step is the one the municipality has already demonstrated it can take: institutionalising FARM-TO-SPOON so that it survives changes in leadership, and continuing to adapt it as tourism growth and climate shocks shift the conditions it was designed for.

For Matanog, the next step is less visible and more consequential. A finalist placing opens doors — to the Galing Pook network, to national agencies looking for models, to investors who read the list. The WOW–Matanog Special Economic Zone and the Bangsamoro Halal Park are already in motion. Whether the municipality can convert national recognition into durable local income for the women who started it is the question that matters.

For the sector, the lesson is the one the criteria already encode. Programs that put communities in the position of co-owners, rather than beneficiaries at the end of a supply chain, tend to be the ones that last.

A note of appreciation

To Mayor Alfredo M. Coro II, Vice Mayor Renato L. Dulguime, and the officials and communities of Del Carmen: three awards for three different programs is an institutional achievement, and the people who should be proudest are the farmers, fisherfolk, and savings group members whose work the award describes.

To Mayor Zohria Saglayan Bansil-Guro and the team at the Municipality of Matanog, and to the women of WOW who began this in 2013: reaching the national shortlist is not a near miss. It is a national result from a municipality that has had fewer advantages than most of the others in that room. Padayon.

To learn more about AGREA Foundation's work with local governments on food security, circular economy, and community livelihoods, explore our official channels. LGUs and organisations interested in collaboration can reach out through our contact page.