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Background and Objectives
The Angat Bayi Women’s Political Empowerment Program aims to develop and support current women elected leaders and emerging young women leaders who will carry and advance a people-centered, rights-based, gender-responsive, participatory, empowering, equitable, inclusive, and sustainable development agenda. After completing the Fellowship Program, fellows are required to develop their own Likhang Bayi Passion Project, an innovative and needs-based solutions to pressing problems in their respective local government units (LGUs). The development of these Likhang Bayi Passion Projects went through consultations among their constituents in identifying the gaps and needs in the community.
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse impact on women’s livelihood, a number of AB Fellows are focused on strengthening the capacity of women’s entrepreneurs in their communities in growing their enterprises. The Likhang Bayi Support Program hopes to contribute to the upliftment of women entrepreneurs in the selected LGUs through capacity building and developing an online marketplace that promotes solidarity and women’s economic empowerment through these following objectives:
Develop a training module that would strengthen women entrepreneurs’ organization, increase their capacity to grow their business, and teach them strategies to identify or create niche market;
Conduct a feasibility study on an online BAYI Tiangge that will be owned and run by the women entrepreneurs themselves with support from the AB Fellows and AB partners.
BAYI Tiangge will be owned and run by women entrepreneurs themselves with support from Angat Bayi Fellows and Angat Bayi partners.
The Online BAYI Tiangge does not claim to address all the issues that challenges women entrepreneurs are experiencing in the global health crisis, but it hopes to jumpstart the process of rebuilding and finding innovative ways to grow their enterprises. Moreover, the feasibility study will help the program identify the potential partners to realize the online BAYI Tiangge.
BAYI Tiangge Principles
BAYI Tiangge’s women entrepreneurs from San Mateo, Isabela; Santa Barbara, Iloilo; Isabela, Negros Occidental; and Roxas, Capiz have collectively struggled to start or sustain their livelihood and businesses throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Angat Bayi Fellows, Angat Bayi Partners, and women entrepreneurs have come together in solidarity to start and run the online BAYI Tiangge online space. Experiencing the societal conditions imposed on women entrepreneurs, which worsened because of the pandemic, the BAYI Tiangge community aims to provide a gender-responsive and caring online entrepreneurial space for its members to rebuild and find innovative ways to grow their enterprises.
Ensuring inclusive learning digital spaces for women entrepreneurs demands practicing feminist transformative principles and values. Echoing the Angat Bayi goals of feminist leadership, inclusive, rights-based, democratic, and good governance; building and protecting democratic institutions and processes; and promotion of active citizenship, the online BAYI Tiangge aims to encourage the Angat Bayi Fellows and Angat Bayi Partners to empower and support women entrepreneurs to take ownership of this online feminist business development center.
1. BAYInihan.
In achieving our goal of creating an online space that empowers women entrepreneurs through information, marketing space, and networking, members must unite as a community. Members must uplift each other in the spirit of cooperation and work closely together towards reaching the goal.
2. Solidarity.
BAYI Tiangge members must act in a position of unity in recognition of each other’s cross-cutting vulnerabilities and individual strengths and talents. Affirming the diversity of experiences and lived realities of each other can further build unity. Sharing information, resources, and power should be constantly practiced.
3. Damayan.
A collective understanding of the structural barriers faced by women entrepreneurs can lead to strengthening their relationship and community. Giving empathetic support to other BAYI Tiangge members means providing guidance and aid when needed. Members must care for each other as a community.
4. Intersectional.
The lived experiences and societal identities of each member is diverse — each identity entails a set of power relations which can increase their struggles. Recognizing that each member has specific struggles because of their intersecting identities affirms is important. Given their numerous identities and cross-cutting vulnerabilities, members and organizers’ interactions with each other must be imbued with care and patience.
5. Tangkilikan
Women entrepreneurs and BAYI Tiangge members should patronize each other’s products and services. In developing each other’s businesses, it would be ideal for each member to support the BAYI Tiangge network by building strong business relationships.
6. Valuing the process.
Rather than just focusing on the goals and results, members and organizers should value the process as well. Patience and compassion are crucial in the growth and active participation of all members. Valuing the process can lead to building stronger connections, which are empowering, democratizing, and educational.
7. Non-hierarchical.
In disrupting insidious concepts of power, such as having power over others, equal and cooperative relationships must be practiced. Instead, power should be facilitative, enabling, collective, and shared within and among groups.
8. Collaborative.
There should active participation and representation of all BAYI Tiangge members. In ensuring that the online space is owned and managed by the members, each member should be assigned organizational tasks to build autonomy and clarify responsibilities.
9. Consensus-building.
In critical discussions and conflict resolutions, each member should be given the space to express their thoughts, opinions, and feelings about key actions and strategies. BAYI Tiangge members must support the diversity of ideas and eliminate extreme or polar positions.
10. Co-creation of knowledge and consciousness-raising.
BAYI Tiangge members should be given the space to reflect on, identify, re-experience, and analyze certain barriers that impede on their development as women entrepreneurs. Co-creation of knowledge through open discussions should be at the center in (re)building certain parts of the online space.
BAYI Tiangge aims to become a community of care for women entrepreneurs experiencing political, societal, and economic constraints imposed on them. In practicing all these feminist transformative values and principles, BAYI Tiangge members must remember that we are acting as community of care and solidarity. No woman entrepreneur is free and uplifted unless all women entrepreneurs are free and uplifted.
We have collaborated with the following Angat Bayi Fellows
in making the BAYI Tiangge website possible:
Hon. Thea Reyes
Provincial Board Member, Capiz
Roxas City, Capiz
Hon. Louella Agcaoili
Municipal Councilor
San Mateo, Isabela
Hon. Rowena Silvederio
Municipal Councilor
Santa Barbara, Iloilo
Hon. Irene Montilla
Municipal Mayor
Municipality of Isabela, Negros Occidental