Description / Services

The Community of sisters of Siervas de San Jose (SSJ) in Rosario, Cavite has encountered in their social investigations a great number of young women who come to this place in order to find work in the different factories of Cavite Economic Zone (CEZ), formerly Cavite Export Processing Zone Authority (CEPZA), coming from all over the Philippines, who are in situations of risk. Many of them do not have the skills needed to find a job. There are other women who cannot find a job due to age limit and other prohibitive requirements. When they find work, most of them work with contracts of 3-5 months only.

Contractualization badly affects the situation of workers who experience constant instability. In spite of being a progressive town because of the presence of CEZ and of the Fish Port, poverty is widespread in Rosario. There are a lot of out-of-school youth roaming around who become victims of the ills of society like prostitution, drug addiction, domestic violence, live-ins, theft and early marriages. Unemployment is widespread, especially among women.

Urged by the SSJ Charism and by the pressing needs of workers, women and youth of Rosario, Cavite, the Community of sisters discerned the effective response they are called to give. Analyzing the root cause of all the presenting problems, and convinced that it is the economic deprivation that leads these sectors to all these situations of risk, the Community, in July 2006, conceived and developed a Talleres de Nazaret project with the double intentionality of: to protect from the dangers of risk the socially challenged workers, women and youth of Rosario, Cavite and to foster Christian industry.

This Talleres de Nazaret (TDN) aims to provide employment, formation and skills to socially challenged unemployed women and out-of-school youth of Rosario with the purpose of uplifting their dignity as women workers and preventing them from falling into all kinds of exploitation, through programs of development and empowerment. This TDN upholds and practices the principles of fair trade.

The Community conducted further research and social investigation of the area in lieu of conceiving this project. They discovered the raw material resources potential in the place. Being near the Fish Port there is an abundance of sea products like squids and mussels. Rosario is also well known for its smoked fish. This led to the development of a Talleres engaged in food production, specifically utilizing the resources of the place. Thus the product lines that had been developed are squid rings, crispy mussels and squid heads.

The preferred target group of this project is the out-of-school youth and socially challenged unemployed women, ages 17-35, of nearby barangays of Rosario. The sisters did home visitations around the area to identify the possible youth and women who can be partners in starting up this enterprise. During the first year of this project, it employed minimum of five youth/women which is envisioned to increase to more than 50 regular workers in the succeeding years. The identified pioneer workers who started the Talleres became part of the product development and market testing of the different product lines. Together with the sisters they acquired the technology transfer and skills required in producing the products through formal training and hands-on experience. They also participated in designing the production area.

The Talleres through the work in the shop and through human and Christian formation aims to inculcate the dignifying and sanctifying value of work to the workers that would lead them to acquire self-knowledge, self-worth and dignity to appreciate themselves and the work they do; to develop their own capacity to confront the issues affecting them and to make decisions that are promotive of growth as persons; to deepen the sense of solidarity and relationship with God and with other workers, thus becoming agents of their own transformation and that of their families and community.

This Talleres aims to benefit not only the direct workers to be employed in the shop and their families but also the local producers/suppliers of the raw materials needed for the different product lines, most of whom are the 24 fisher folk members of the First Rosario Cavite Multi-Purpose Cooperative. Together with the Cooperative, aside from being business partners, all opportunities will be taken advantage of to interact and relate with these fisher folks, theirs wives and children for a sustainable livelihood program through business endeavors and through informal and formal formation program that would lead them to become solid Christian workers and agents of change in society, and through them effect some changes in their families and consequently in the barangay and the bigger community.

This Talleres collaborates and maintains networking with local NGO’s and government agencies and institutions for assistance in the area of technology transfer, product development, packaging, management training and marketing assistance.