BAGUIO CITY—The local “ube” (purple yam) jam here is almost synonymous with the Good Shepherd Convent, which has been making the popular “pasalubong” (gift) for decades now.
But the bestselling sweet treat and other products, like peanut brittle, strawberry jam and jelly, and an assortment of cookies, made at the training center managed by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd are not merely part of a profit-generating, food-processing enterprise.
In fact, thousands of Cordillera youth are being sent to college every time a tourist buys a jar of jam or baked goods from Mountain Maid Training and Development Foundation, run by the Good Shepherd nuns in Baguio.
Since 1952, the foundation has been helping send impoverished students, mostly young girls, to college through these products, according to the nuns.
At the start of what would later grow into a large-scale business endeavor, the Good Shepherd nuns and the working students under their care were only producing strawberry jam, struggling to sustain the operation due to a lack of financial capacity.
‘Empower’ youth
The nuns recalled reaching out to their friends just to be able to sell their strawberry jams, asking their customers to return the bottles due to the limited stocks of glass jars.
These days, they can afford to source out glass jars from a leading packaging company, and their orders come regularly in delivery vans.
About half of the revenue generated by the training center comes from ube jam, while the rest is from other products, such as peanut and cashew brittle, pickled chayote, blueberry jam, lengua de gato, orange marmalade, alfajores and angel cookies.
In a previous interview, Sister Guadalupe Bautista, the foundation’s coordinator, says their primary goal is to empower and improve the lives of young Cordillera people through education.
Among those who benefited from the Good Shepherd training center was Sheena Ngabit, who managed to finish college when she became one of the working students there.
“I would not have finished college without the help of Good Shepherd,” Ngabit tells the Inquirer.
Ngabit, now 35, started making jam and peanut brittle in 2004, when she was just a college freshman.
Juggling work, school
She spent most of her free time during her college years at the training center, which was her main source of livelihood at that time, mixing ingredients to produce the jams and the peanut brittle.
She received her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics degree in 2009 from Saint Louis University.“It was hard juggling work and studies, but I had to work to pay for my tuition and other school needs,” Ngabit shares.
She adds: “I can make the jams and brittle, except the pastries. We were on rotation, assigned to the different stations on schedule then, so we learned to make all the products.”
According to her, one of her fellow working students is now selling “snowballs and cookies” after learning the craft from the Good Shepherd bakeshop.
“This is not a problem with the sisters [at Good Shepherd],” she quips, noting that it has been the nuns’ ultimate purpose to help deserving young people by providing them the means and opportunities to have a better life after spending their time at the training center.
The mission also helps housewives who need to augment their family income and out-of-school youth who want to save up for their education. INQ
