PREMIE project partners hold final meeting

On May 5-7, 2005 in Kilkis, Greece, AWCF's Regional Coordinator Ms Salome Ganibe and Member Services Coordinator Ms Angelita Valdez joined the "Final Consortium Meeting" of the Project "Building Business Management Skills in Ten Co-operatives Ruled by Women in Camarines Sur, Philippines." Also in the meeting were Project partners from Spain and Greece. The local government of Camarines Sur province in the Philippines, the Project locale, was unable to send a representative.

The Project was done from April 2002 to May 2005 in Camarines Sur. The AWCF and the Camarines Sur Government (CSG) were partners in the Project that involved the implementation, digitalization, and dissemination of the "PREMIE," a business management methodology, in 10 co-ops ruled or led by women in Camarines Sur. Some of the co-ops are affiliates of the National Confederation of Cooperatives, AWCF's member in the Philippines. The Project was supported by the European mission under the "Asia Urbs Program," which promotes urban cooperation between governments in Europe and South/Southeast Asia.

In the Greece meeting in May, AWCF presented the results of the Project's Workpackage 4, the "Implementation of the PREMIE Methodology in Ten Selected Co-ops in Camarines Sur." The report covered the pre-implementation phase (selection of co-ops; setting up of the Project Management Team; co-op profiling; and review of the PREMIE Methodology), and implementation of PREMIE in the 10 co-ops in Camarines Sur.

Also in Greece, AWCF joined the other participants of the meeting in visiting the Goumenesis Co-op, which is assisted by the Centre Epimorfotiki Kilkis Ltd. and the ULAK. The ULAK is the union of local authorities in the Kilkis prefecture. The Co-op had started among the women of the community so as to preserve traditional values, culture, and food processing practices while augmenting income for the family. Another assisted women's association in Greece was also visited where the partners had the chance to interact and share the co-op situation and practices in the Philippines. The PREMIE, as contained in the "PREMIE Management Manual" is designed to boost the business management skills of women leaders in small co-ops. The basis of PREMIE is a European management model designed according to the European Model for Business Excellence (EFOM). PREMIE has been successfully implemented in Diputacion Foral de Bizkaia, a region in the Basque country, Spain, with the help of Labein (Technological and Innovation Centre). In Greece, the Vocational Training Centre Epimorfotiki is the NGO partner of ULAK in running the PREMIE project.

The PREMIE Manual is a self-training module/kit, an important contribution to the body of work that caters to the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). More than being a how-to book, the Manual's different modules provide a framework to assess the management and organization of SMEs, to allow the leadership and staff to see where they are and how they can achieve success.

The Manual helps the readers to look at their SMEs' own experiences, and to use these to make insights and develop their own set of management how-tos.

After the AWCF Project team had received the English version of the PREMIE Manual from Labein, it reviewed the manual and provided its recommendations to Labein so as to contextualize it with co-op and gender perspectives. The final version of the Manual was read seven times by AWCF before it gained confidence to transfer the methodology or give orientation on it to the CSG staff and the five local consultants assigned to assist the participating co-ops. The Manual was translated into Pilipino (Philippine language) months before the end of the project.

The CSG had selected the 10 co-operatives that were involved in the Project after a thorough selection process. The selection considered both the project objectives and the political aims of the CSG. These 10 primary co-ops have members from all walks of life. The co-ops range from having a very small membership (22 members) to maintaining a large one (7,500 members). The assets of the co-ops range from US$5,000 to US$600,000. All of them are engaged in savings and lending services, and two co-ops are into production and marketing.

Co-operative profiling and pre-assessment of the participating co-ops were conducted to set up benchmarks. These activities were continuously undertaken before and after the kick-off meeting of all partners in the Philippines on June 17-20, 2002. The gathering of updated co-operative profile was thereafter done every six months. The profiling was done, among its other objectives, to show a "then and now" progress picture of the co-ops during and after the PREMIE implementation.

The tasks for the Project's implementation were multi-faceted and had a number of actors, aside from the co-ops themselves. The Project Management Unit/Team was set up with its roles and responsibilities, flow of communication, and plan of action clearly identified, understood, and accepted by everyone. How the Mentors (co-op managers) and the five Consultants effectively played their roles in the Project contributed heavily to achieving its objectives. The commitment of the Mentors to formally and even informally learn the seven modules of PREMIE and how to implement the methodology in their co-ops—and to actually implement it—was vital. In connection to this, likewise important was the intervention of the Consultants to accelerate the Mentors' diligent learning of the PREMIE. The Consultants themselves had to undergo a rigid training by AWCF and CSG on the PREMIE methodology, including conducting the assessment, audit, and post-assessment of the co-ops; presenting the results to the co-ops; helping the Mentors on the reading and learning of the PREMIE manual; and assisting the Mentors in preparing actions plans to improve the co-ops' performance based on the assessment results. It was thus important to establish the good rapport of the Consultants with the Mentors and the co-ops so as to effectively fulfill the changes and improvements sought for by the Project.

The Mentors have given precious effort and time to learning and implementing PREMIE. They accepted that the transformation of the co-ops toward excellent customers' satisfaction is a long journey, and that they as the Mentors and managers of the co-op are the lead persons to do this. They strove hard to create the atmosphere of teamwork, motivation, and quality work life for the management staff. As they themselves underwent self-development, they also sought the capacity-building of the staff in delivering timely, quality and needed services to the members and other co-op customers. At the end of the project, the Mentors committed to continue carrying on the PREMIE, and even helping other co-operatives, and co-op leaders and members in continuing to apply PREMIE and enjoy its benefits. As one of the Mentors had put it, PREMIE is a win-win framework despite the challenges it presents in implementing and adopting it. But all that PREMIE—and the co-ops—needs to succeed is the commitment of the officers and staff, and programmed activities that all have agreed on to implement. These are small sacrifices to make that will pay off in terms of strengthening the co-op as a social and financial institution.