Employmet Office Opens

Tarlac, Tarlac, Philippines

5 January 2009

On the 3rd of January 2009 the employment office re-opened in the Tarlac Stake Center. This has been our goal since we arrived here in Tarlac because of our specific call. The office is a Stake Employment Committee (SEC) office and is run by volunteers from the wards within the stake. The leaders are called and set apart for their responsibilities on the committee and were excited to finally have the office open. We play a support role to train the committee members to be trainers in the Career Workshop and have set up two dates for workshop training for them and members. The committee has taken the lead and developed a training calendar for the first quarter to train members in ‘lively hood’ such as cell phone repair, welding, mushroom growing, etc. These classes will be taught by local certified trainers and the participants will be given a certification upon completion.

We have also have been working on preparations for the visit of the assessment team from the Benson Institute from BYU. They are arriving later this week and will spend a week in the field evaluating the local rice growing practices, farm supplier support abilities, water sources, government, farm associations, rice processing and marketing procedures. We are working with a very capable District President who has been the spearhead in making all the arrangements with contacts for meetings that will be held. This is a community effort (not just the church) including other churches and organizations in the effort to improve agriculture yields and also to indentify where LDS Charities might be able to help local medical clinics, etc.
We have been busy as you can tell and are enjoying the activity.

Elder NB & Sister MB