SRE President Speaks at Conference on Global Poverty

SRE President Perla Manapol was one of the speakers at a conference on Bottom-up Approaches to Global Poverty held at Baylor University, Waco, Texas October 23-25. The conference was sponsored by the University's Institute for Faith and Learning (IFL) as part of Baylor's Symposium on Faith and Culture Series.

The conference brought together an impressive, diverse line-up of participants - engineers, pastors, economists, entrepreneurs, missionaries, theologians - who discussed and explored the various ways that the church, appropriate technology, and social entrepreneurship can work toward the same goal of helping those with the greatest need.

Perla's presentation, "Appropriate Technology for the Poor: From the Philippines to Liberia," focused on the "truly bottom-up" processes to add value to coconuts that provide livelihood opportunities for poor coconut farmers. As she explained, "I realized, after having made an assessment of the coconut 'industry' in Liberia, that even what we consider low-tech value-adding in the Philippines is still beyond the capabilities of Liberian farmers," owing to the latter's lack of access to electricity and farm-to-market roads.

As examples, she showed how Filipino farmers make their own cooking oil at home and how this simple process also produces high-value byproducts including high-nutrient animal and poultry feed (very useful to Liberia, where eggs are imported from other countries), charcoal from coconut shells, vinegar from the coconut water, even sugar from the sap. The cooking oil can also be used for treating burns and as hair and skin conditioner - not to forget, an oil lamp that emits a pleasant aroma. (The waste husks are also sources of high-value byproducts such as coconut fiber and peat, but the process requires electricity.)

Early next year, Perla will lead a 4-person team from SRE to carry out a training program to show Liberian coconut farmers how to earn a living through small-scale, community-based, value-adding. The USAID-funded project is designed for replication in other coconut-growing countries in Africa.