TACLOBAN CITY-Over a hundred mentee-graduates of the Kapatid Mentor ME (KMME) program of the Department of Trade and Industry 8 (DTI-8) underwent a one-day Money and Market Encounter (MME) with partner financial institutions and market platforms held on July 12 at the Summit Hotel, this city.
OIC Regional Director Celerina Bato of DTI-8 said MME compliments the KMME program which gathered national and local partner financial institutions and market platforms to present their products and services for the participants to explore and scale up their businesses.
“Our desire is to see every entrepreneur explore all the possibilities in the market and every opportunity to expand,” Bato said.
Bato added that the most common problem entrepreneurs are experiencing is on how to find opportunities and alternatives to increase their finances in order for them to expand their market reach.
Together with Go Negosyo and the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development (MSMED) Council, DTI’s first Money and Market Encounter rollout in Eastern Visayas saw bigger opportunities for the graduates to interact with the speakers-mentors during the Money Forum, Market Forum, and Digital Talks Forum.
DTI-8 invited representatives of financial institutions and national and local mentors to help increase access to finances, access to brick and mortar, and digital marketing platforms of assisted micro, small and medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs).
Side-by-side with MME was the business-to-business matching wherein the KMME graduates had a one-on-one encounter with the speakers/panelists who guided and helped them match their concerns on financial, marketing and digital matters.
“MME is in partnership with financial institutions as well as our market platforms, and our role continues even after these mentees graduate to sustain their businesses,” she said.
KMME program is a 10-week module aimed to help MSMEs scale up their businesses through mentoring on the different functional areas of entrepreneurship and be equipped with the right mindset, business-knowhow and help them scale up their enterprises.
Since 2016, DTI-8 had already produced seven KMME batch of graduates in Leyte province and three batches in the other provinces in Eastern Visayas, Bato informed.
(LDL/PIA-8, Leyte)
