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A lot of people already know about the social enterprise ECHOstore, the sustainable lifestyle retailer that gathers many products from small, marginalized and cultural communities, creative industry practitioners, women groups and foundations under one roof. However, the story behind the product-makers of these wares is usually more compelling than ECHOstore itself.

Case in point: the Kababaihang Masigla ng Nueva Ecija (KMNE), the group behind the Masigla Food Products brand of preserved fruits and rice-based products sold at ECHOstore and other outlets around Luzon. In over a decade, the group of farmers’ wives and retired teachers has produced 30 products—harvesting accolades for them along the way—and now is knocking on the doors of the export market as they perfect their two best-known items: sun-dried tomatoes and rice wine.

Preserving the harvest
When KMNE was formed in 1999 as a community project of a Masonic Lodge in Quezon town of Nueva Ecija province, one of its goals was to make use of an oversupply of tomatoes in the summer. These were harvested during the off-season for rice (the province’s main cash crop), but the tomatoes often rotted away in the midyear heat or were just given away.

Soon help started pouring into the enterprise, after the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) had given the group P50,000 for initial capital. The Masonic Foundation of Lodge No. 73 donated P150,000 for them to buy food-grade equipment. The provincial government of Nueva Ecija also provided P300,000 to build a food processing plant and training center on a donated 800 sq m parcel of land.

Expanding lineup
Again through the DTI, which lent them a marketing consultant under its One Town One Product (OTOP) program, the women’s group expanded their products into three main product lines: Pagkaing Masigla, which includes their fruit preserves and tilanggit (a tilapia version of the popular dried and salted fish danggit); Inuming Masigla, healthy drinks like their bestselling “Vin Arroz” rice wine, as well as tamarind juice, rice coffee, and ginger tea; and Panimplang Masigla, cooking mixes like powdered mushrooms, guavas and tamarinds, and dried tomatoes in olive oil.

These products keep every one of KMNE’s 30 members busy throughout the year. “Our mainstay workers get regular pay,” says Vilma B. Joson, the group’s president. “But when fruits and vegetables are in season, we hire 30 to 50 additional workers.”

Not only has this setup provided an income for the families of KMNE, Joson—the wife of the late Felicisimo Joson Jr., a former acting Labor secretary—saw a change in their town. “I was inspired to make productive the hours of many of our women in our village,” says the Fine Arts graduate of the University of the Philippines, who ran a garments exporting business for 23 years. “I wanted our women to become productive and gain their true self-worth.”With that goal achieved, “our target now is to penetrate the export market,” Joson adds