Despite the challenges for businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, optimistic Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) entrepreneurs have flocked to the Department of Trade and Industry’s free online training program’s Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME).
In the 2022 report of the DTI – Cordillera, 99.7 percent of businesses in the region this year are included under MSMEs which brought 70.8 percent of work opportunities in the region.
To help entrepreneurs, last April the DTI organized a mentorship program starting and ended recently. The program was aimed to equip the entrepreneurs with basic knowledge about the business industry that they could use as they venture in the business world.
Some 102 Baguio entrepreneurs graduated from said program and where participants studied a total number of 15 modules that contained topics about product development, marketing, taxation, human resources management, to name a few.
Michiko Liquete, one of the entrepreneurs who graduated in the mentorship, attested to the training effectiveness, “Ini-implement ko na po yun sa kumpanya namin, tapos trial and error ganyan tapos sa marketing, HR, Branding ganyan. (I am implementing what I learned from the program and which I now implement in our company).”
She added: “Napakalaking tulong po ito ng DTI, for start-up businesses like us, kasi we treat it, this brand like parang anak po namin, so yung guidance ng KMM, malaking tulong po sa amin (This program of the DTI is a big help for us who just started their business and the brand is like our very own child, so the KMM guidance is really a big help for us).”
DTI – Cordillera director Juliet P. Lucas acknowledges the significance the MSMEs bring to the city and brands them as an innovative and creative sector in the creative city.
Go Negosyo founder Joe Conception said that despite the challenge of the pandemic, the KMME Program always aims to bring greater inclusivity to the growing economy.
Because of the event’s success, DTI eyes future programs that aim to empower more aspiring entrepreneurs.
Jobelle Galapate
