WHILE heading a state college in Surigao del Norte for five years, I proposed halfway in my third year of assignment to set up a fisherfolk museum in Malimono – a town 36 kms away from Surigao City, seat of the College’s main campus. I thought that a fisherfolk museum was a fitting multi-purpose facility (educational and cultural) and entrepreneurial too, which could serve eco-tourism. Malimono is a coastal town. As one travels from the main campus to Malimono, stretches of the clear blue sea are on one’s right. One is treated to clear pure air, splashing sounds of children bathing in merriment and on some sandy stretch are homeward bound fisherfolk after an early morning or afternoon bountiful catch.

I came to head the College in September 1998, barely three months after its being chartered as the Surigao State College of Technology— a merger of the Surigao del Norte School of Arts and Trades in Surigao City, and the Malimono School of Fisheries. Two-year diploma programs supervised by Tesda were common to both campuses. Its main campus was preparing for its initial baccalaureate in the liberal arts and teacher education for its first school year as a state college.

The presidency of the fledgling college was no holiday for me. There was no problem with any group nor with anyone – the faculty members, the staff, the politicians, the community. The problem was changing mental models on matters academic and no one was to blame. It was the natural course of any social group that assumed a new identity – from being schools of livelihood technology to a college offering academic degrees. This shall be it — a more rigorous academic bent; for its academics to dwell on reflective thought, on man’s longing for truth and beauty as expressed through the arts as well as to probe into the sciences to reach out to the unknown; —while no less in value, continue learning and teaching the technology and livelihood education programs — keeping true to the more practical, more down to earth, more on the here and now, which the merged vocational-technical schools had long excelled in. It may be said, this new identity was a marriage of earth and heaven.

After sending several teachers to earn their respective graduate degrees, we opened at Malimono baccalaureates in fisheries and in food technology and at the main, added a major in mathematics. On its seventeenth year this 2015, the College is on its way to university-hood.

On my third year, having gotten a grant for a fish sanctuary which assured sustained fish culture, it was ripe time to have maximum return from our rich fish capture. At this stage of our “fish-program” we successfully tapped a half million pesos grant from DOST-TAPI for food (fish) processing equipment. We produced smoked fish, marinated dried fish and even fish meal for feeds. Almost no part of the bigger variety was wasted. The fine meat, we made into Spanish sardines and the shreds, into fish loaf. Teachers were excited to indulge in entrepreneurship. The schools in landlocked areas were our welcomed market. Business was brisk.

Full Story: http://www.manilatimes.net/a-fisherfolk-museum-for-malimono-some-blasted-dream/230168/