The School-on-the-Air, or SOA as known to community people in Ilocandia, is now at its preparatory stage convening the municipal and city agriculturists and technologists in MMSU Training hall today, February 20, 2018, in its orientation and briefing on Accelerating the Promotion of Crops and Livestock Technologies in Ilocos Norte through SOA.

With a total of 20 SOA Coordinators from the different municipalities in the province including CGU-Batac and the OPAG Coordinator, the orientation and briefing was conceptualized to reorient them of the need to build resilient and self-sufficient communities against the effects of climate change through enhanced technologies and increased awareness in managing and mitigating its effects and set the timeline for the conduct of the SOA in order to maximize the number of beneficiaries and intensity of its effectiveness in extension delivery.

This year’s SOA is an extension project of the MMSU- Extension Directorate through its Applied Communication Section, the College of Agriculture, Food, and Sustainable Development, and the College of Industrial Technology, and in cooperation with the Provincial Government of Ilocos Norte through the Office of the Provincial Agriculturist and the different Local Government Units, the Ilocos Agriculture, and Resources Research and Development Consortium (ILARRDEC), and Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD). Fully funded and managed by the University in collaboration with PCAARRD-funded STCBF project under Dr. Dionisio S. Bucao, the SOA Program is geared towards Accelerating the Promotion of Crops and Livestock Technologies in Ilocos Norte. Attention to crops and livestock was identified as the focus of this year’s learning course because of their vulnerability to the effects of climate change in production, quality of feed crop and forage, water availability, animal and milk production, crops and livestock diseases, animal reproduction, and biodiversity. Moreover, the SOA Program will serve as another channel of the said project in its information dissemination of the interventions in Agriculture such as use of carrageenan technology, a plant growth promoter developed by PNRI, along with its close community monitoring activities. Experts from said colleges and units will be serving the program as technical experts and speakers in its airtime.

Recognizing radio as by far, still the most influential medium of communication, DWFB Radyo ng Bayan-Laoag will again serve as the anchor to this on-air class along with two radio stations in Piddig and Burgos. However, with the inadequacies and problems encountered related to radio signals and others during the conduct of SOA in the past years, the planning for this year’s SOA has opened new insights and strategies among the SOA Coordinators in managing their respective jurisdictions and in devising ways to help the enrollees of the program. A sharing of experiences and ideas bulked the orientation and briefing that truly set the melody of the participants in harmony. Hence, it is envisioned that the program will again be a notch in service to extension delivery and in reaching farther communities through the airwave.

Enrollment is already set in place through the SOA Coordinators designated in the different municipalities. Continuous coordination with the radio stations involved are still a work in progress with the airing time of said program still to be finalized.  Interested participants are all enjoined in the learning course set to commence on March 14, 2018. Come and join!

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