Gainza Trade Fair and doing business

Over DWNX on my weekly 15-minute Pagheras on Buhay Marinero program every Saturday, the morning TINDOG anchor, Elmer Abad, asked me what I think about the church holding business events like the upcoming Gainza Trade Fair. Doesn’t it contradict or conflict with the church’s avowed mission of poverty, chastity, and obedience?

I did not expect the question to crop up as I was sharing updates on the Tabang Bikol Movement activities with the two-year Social Enterprise Development (SED) Project of the Mariners and the Commission on Higher Education – Office of Planning, Research, and Knowledge Management (CHED – OPRKM) that will end in December 2024. I mentioned that a culminating event for the project is the Regional Social Enterprises Summit on October 25 at the Atrium of the Central Bicol State, Pili Camarines Sur, with a trade fair and project leaders presenting significant findings of community-based research on social enterprises in Bicol alongside other scholarly studies from different institutions led by Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation, the Central Bicol State University in Agriculture, the Naga City College, the Bicol University, and the Bicol State College of Applied Sciences and Technology.

I also conveyed the good news that the various social enteprises organized and developed during the two years in the project pilot areas in Camarines Sur and Albay are participating in the 7th Bishop Francisco Gainza Trade Fair (BFGTF) of the 100 years of the Canonical Coronation of Our Lady of Peñafrancia; Naga City crowned Siempre La Reina de Nuestra Region in 1924.

The BFGTF is a yearly fair named in honor of Bishop Gainza, who pioneered the first agricultural and industrial expo in Bicol in 1875 when he was the 24th bishop of the Diocese of Caceres from 1862 to 1879. A Bicolano historian called him a “brilliant administrator, farsighted planner, and a builder of resourceful enterprise.” It revived in 2010 during the Tercentenary Celebration of the devotion to Our Lady of Peñafrancia. Since then, it has featured booths, agricultural and aqua-marine products, product demonstrations, and entrepreneurial sharing from the exhibitors, some of whom come from different regions of the country. The Caceres Social Action Foundation, Inc. (CASAFI) has since managed the yearly BFGTF in partnership with the Department of Agriculture (DA), the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and recently with other business groups like the Philippine Chamber of Commerce.  Most exhibitors are small and medium enterprises like JaimEliza, which produces the natural ESense stress reliever, LGUs with their OTOPs; other government and private income-generating groups; and social enterprises, including those from Tabang Bikol Movement like the People’s Organization of Disaster Survivors (PODiS), which produces bottled pure citronella oils as effective natural mosquito repellents, the Ilaw ng Kababaihan that produces citronella-scented candles and the Bugkos Kabataan, that produces bottled tasty chilly garlic sauce and fashion accessories. Today, other social enterprises have emerged from the SED project as new producers and creative entrepreneurs like the Ilaw ng Hilot Association (IHA), the IP women of Ilaw ng Kababaihan of Guinaban, Ocampo, Dugcal Mushroom PODIS and the Mabuhay Women from Libmanan, which are joining the BFGTF for the first time under the TBM-SED banner.

Church and social entrepreneurship

So, what can I say about the church getting into business affairs or what cynics say are matters of the world and not the spirit? I say, why not?

In one of its public statements, Caritas affirms its vision to help alleviate poverty through entrepreneurship and solidarity that promote integral development. It vows to serve as an avenue for fostering entrepreneurship in the region. It shall generate stakeholder income by showcasing the best Bicol products and conducting activities that capacitate micro, small, and medium enterprises and boost products’ competitiveness. These quoted statements reflect the progressive side of the trade fair and the church.

The BFGTF can be a venue for poverty alleviation  - its mission is to assist and help MSMEs and social enterprises gain more significant market exposure during the longest regional Fiesta, which has excellent potential. I think the fair named after Bishop Gainza is in itself a recognition of the bishop’s legacy as an inspiration for progress and change - the bishop who was a leader of the secularization movement during the Spanish era, seeking reforms within the Catholic Church to respect the rights of the secular clergy, who were primarily natives, in parishes speak of greatness. Bishop Gainza believed in empowering the poor local food producers through trade fairs. It alone indicated the intent to address poverty through long-term solutions, not feeding, soup kitchens, and other short-term actions. Of course, another matter is how to capacitate the local producers and provide an enabling social environment for sustained growth.

Short-term solutions can lead to a deeper cycle of poverty. The church, with its unique position in society, can be a beacon of hope, an influencer, often the first to approach and to respond to a crisis, the privilege of being tax-exempt and comparatively leading a comfortable life amidst the poverty of the many, ability to create jobs for local economies and regarded highly in the barangay even with its imperfections. The church can indeed play a significant role in eradicating poverty. But first, it must be serious to eliminate the culture of mendicancy and patronage within and without as we face serious crises such as climate change and income inequality.