My Story

Intro

Many youth in the countryside are not engaged in gainful employment. They are vagrants or just whiling away the hours in doing nothing because in the first place there is no opportunity for them. Some of them migrate to the cities having seen on TV and heard in the radio that there is money to be made in urban jungles but being of low education and no knowledge of city life, most end up as vagrants, cigarette vendors and even pickpockets or prostitutes, prey to men of low morals. Jed formed an organization that provides young people with a source of income in their rural communities, while tackling issues of climate change.

About Me

I am Jed Christian Sayre a 20 years old entrepreneur and student from the Philippines. My parents are NGO leaders and social development champions and early on I was immersed and mesmerized on what they are doing and the impact of their work to the communities they serve.  Theirs is not a 8-hour job and the pay is low and irregular but I see in them the happiness in being able to help others and in imparting the value of selflessness, dedication and love of neighbours.  My parents are my heroes and inspiration and prodded me to follow the same path as theirs.

Aside from heading ALEY-NM I am still a student taking up BS Developmental Communication at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City. After taking some basic subjects in agronomy and animal husbandry I saw a lot of potential but also challenges in the countryside like massive soil erosion, poor soil condition and low agricultural productivity coupled with extreme poverty. Than I  found out more about climate change and greenhouse gases and the importance of trees in combating these. This is how I came up with the idea to develop a ‘Living Museum” which will be a repository as well as source of knowledge, farm inputs as well as income for the youth. Subsequently I founded the Association of Locally-Empowered Youth in Northern Mindanao or Aley-Nm, which provides socio-economic services to the youth mainly in the province of Misamis Oriental in Mindanao with the vision to empower youth to be partners in rural development and not a liability to society.

Besides my studies and Aley-Nm my biggest hobby is photography and my camera is always with me wherever I go.  I love reading good books, going to movies and meeting friends and other people. I love also to travel and to join competitions especially if it is about rural transformation.

My Venture

My NGO establishes and nurtures “Living Museums” in poor, marginal, upland communities with the main aim of empowering local youths so that they take care of the environment while at the same time earn an income from the low external input sustainable farming activities.  The Living Museums are areas from 5,000 square meters to 2 hectares in size where the local youth association grow and nurture ASEAN’s most important trees such as rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum), mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana), lanzones (Lansium domesticum), as well as Philippine medical plants approved by the Department of Health (DOH) such as bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), horseradish (Moringa olefeira) and more. Young people learn how to care for trees, ecology and the environment thereby helping in improving biodiversity, while improving the incomes for their families.

The ALEY-NM identifies and negotiates rent or lease a land area to be made into a Living Museum then when this is consummated, a local youth association is formed or when there is one already, mobilized and strengthened. We will than disperse a loan to the youth association to manage the Living Museum. The young people than access different income streams comprising, a) sale of farm produce and planting materials, b) fees levied during local trainings, c) eco-tourism activities, d) sale of herbal plants and products, eg. cough remedies, de-wormers, vitamins, e) sale of offspring of small animals.

The main objective of my NGO is to empower the local youths, give them hope and roots in the barrios where they are living by making the barrios productive, vibrant and a repository of local knowledge at the same time improving the local biodiversity by nurturing the land in a low-external input system (as opposed to high-chemical agriculture) and incorporating crop-trees-animals in a nutrient-cycle, sustainable manner.  The impact of my project is 3-fold, a) producing a sustainable way of life, b) empowering the youth, and, c) combating climate change and improving local biodiversity.