Stop giving them fishes. Instead, teach them how to fish.
It's not the original line but by etymology, or study of words and their origins, the famous line is believed to have come from way, way back, long before we were all born into this word, err, world.
According to the Wiktionary, the oldest English-language use of the proverb was found in Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie's (1837–1919) novel, Mrs. Dymond (1885), in a slightly different form:
" […] if you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.
Okay, enough now with the intro although that is the very essence of this piece for this corner in this week's edition of OpinYon Batangas.
But by this time, the 4-day Skills Training Workshop in Basic Baking sponsored by the provincial government of Batangas in cooperation with several private entities is already done, for sure.
The gist of this is actually the very essence of the verse above earlier mentioned and that Batangas Governor DoDo Mandanas' directive to teach Taal eruption victims basic baking courses is a laudable move.
Teaching them to "learn how to fish" so that they won't go hungry.
With a small capital, soon the men and women who participated in the four-day baking seminar will be selling pandesal and other kinds of bread products.
We never know, this could be a big break for them after the phreatic eruption of Taal volcano displaced them and forced them to live in temporary shelters in Barangay Talaibon of Ibaan town up to this very moment.
Picked to spearhead the project was the Provincial Cooperative Livelihood and Enterprise Development Office (PCLEDO) together with the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office (PSWDO).
Private organizations and sponsors led by GOALS Training and Assessment Institue, Inc., Pilmico Foods Corporation, and Integrated Agribusiness ng Food Subsidiary of Aboitiz Group, also immensely contributed time, talent, and treasure for the success of the 4-day baking seminar.
That actually is but a single laudable move forward as the provincial government is involving the hundreds of families quartered at Talaibon since the January 12 Taal eruption into productive individuals.
Located on a vast agricultural land, the provincial agricultural office also engaged the evacuees in farming, planting high-value crops inside the resettlement complex among other activities.
A contest was even launched to that effect, for them to produce healthier, robust and marketable crops.
That's another way of teaching them "how to fish" and earn for them a living as they were given a good share from the sales of their harvest.
The last time, we came across a photo of them smiling from ear to ear during a bountiful harvest of eggplants, okra, siling pangsigang, pechay, and other crops, was sometime in the middle of 2020.
We're sure, that bountiful harvest was seconded by another, and another from there.
Talk about, teaching people how to fish, and no one will ever go hungry.
Email ismaelamigo@yahoo.com .