Story is also told of a child who caught a bird in his hand and asked his mother whether the bird was dead or alive. The mother said, if I say it is alive, you will grip the bird and it will eventually die; if I say it is dead, you will let it go and fly.
Two important lessons here: one, your hometown has treasures in it. Two, the becoming or unbecoming of a hometown is actually within our grip.
This is exactly the story I want to share about my hometown, Culaba, a small town in a small province of Biliran. The town is only about 7.4 hectares with a population of 13,000. Total LGU income is only about PhP31M in 2011, PhP355,000 of which is locally-sourced. Much of the livelihood is sourced from agriculture and fishery.
State of Local Governance Performance Report in 2011 shows that while Culaba is basically agriculture and fishery, in the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 as excellent performance, my hometown only rates its support to fishery services as 2.17 and to agriculture sector as 3.71. The report also discloses that LGU-assessed rating on entrepreneurship, business and industry promotion is 2.13. Fair enough but it is actually a weak performance. Infrastructure and production support is inadequate. LGU is not business-friendly.
With all its undiscovered potentials, Culaba is waiting for anyone who would choose the place as his or her next destination. Make it your home for a day, or your hometown for a lifetime.