The Community Crafts Association of the Philippines (CCAP), is a non-profit, non-government organization. It is into crafts, development marketing and sustainable development.

CCAP eliminates the many layers of middlemen in the marketing system by directly linking with the buyers and the producers. With a strategy it calls development marketing, CCAP advocates for fair trade and endeavors to pay the producers what is due them, in a trading relationship built on partnership.

Its strategy includes building small but viable community-based enterprise that are effectively organized and self-reliant.

At present, CCAP has helped evolved nine producer associations that strive to stand on their own and eventually snowball development within their own communities. While CCAP likewise deals with entrepreneurs and family-based handicraft businesses, it expects wider spread and longer-term benefits from handicraft trading for the organized producer associations.

CCAP recognizes that for crafts to be a means to sustainable development, it should require more than environmental consciousness. It would need an economic paradigm that can share and spread the benefits of development to the greatest number and ease the pressure poverty places on the environment. It should also require an effective social infrastructure to build on.

CCAP's Sustainable Development Concept in Practice: Mauraro Handicraft Producers Association (MAHAPA)

MAHAPA emerged from a trading relationship between CCAP and a small village entrepreneur who acted as the middle person trading decorative items with individual craft workers. She was convinced about the benefits her community could get if she gives up her personal business in favor of a cooperative set-up where all the craft workers become co-owners of a larger-scale handicraft business. A month after the initial orientation meeting and organizing activities spearheaded by community organizers of CCAP, an all-women, 28-member group (each representing a family) was formally organized and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The members elected nine members to the Board of Directors, who further elected the original village entrepreneur as President. She remains President until now.

A series of capability-building activities were launched to prepare MAHAPA for bigger challenges. Training activities were conducted by CCAP staff. Representatives from NGOs and government line agencies also shared their expertise by giving technical inputs. Inadequacy of raw materials gave rise to to a tie-up between MAHAPA and a local university's College of Agriculture for a joint abaca plantation project. The University was to provide a project site, planting materials, technical know-how and production and post-production technologies. MAHAPA, on the other hand provided the labor.

Recently, MAHAPA has ventured into more functional items (e.g. packaging for cosmetics for the Body Shop) to keep the market. A slack in sales in the previous year served as a motivation to take product development more seriously and not stick to the kind of product that made them known. CCAP provides them and other producer groups intensive product development by hiring professional designers to ensure a stable and expanding market base for their products.

From an initial all-women membership, MAHAPA has become a household-based (but women represented) association where all the family members are engaged in production. Stories of how houses were built, furniture purchased, children being able to go to school abound in the village. Now it is a recognized contributor to community development, providing assistance to community projects from their own common fund. From their earnings, they were also able to build a warehouse and purchase a second-hand transport vehicle. They have also come of age when they participated in a trade fair in Manila through their own initiative where they were introduced to other exporters.

MAHAPA has yet to experience the market expansion and increased sales that an emerging environmentally conscious market promises to bring. In the same manner, they themselves have to be continuously environmentally conscious not only in their livelihood activities but also in their day to day lifestyle. CCAP would like to believe that the seeds of sustainable development have been planted-through a social infrastructure that can advocate and work towards a more equitably shared wealth and a better managed community resource.


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