The Department of Migrant Workers Regional Office 2, led by Regional Director Atty. Rogelio T. Benitez, conducted the second batch of the Byaheng Entrepreneur cum Financial Awareness Seminar and Small Business Management Training on February 19, 2026 at the Faraon Integrated Farm in Aglipay, Quirino. The session is part of a week-long training series running across Cagayan Valley, designed to give OFWs a practical roadmap for sustainable reintegration into local livelihood and enterprise.

The choice of venue was not incidental. The farm belongs to the keynote speaker — and his story is exactly the point of the program.

The Speaker Who Built the Farm

Mark Anthony N. Faraon spent 14 years working in Dubai. When he came home, he did not look for another employer. He built a six-hectare sustainable farm enterprise in Quirino from scratch, using the savings he had accumulated abroad.

Faraon spoke at the seminar about the specific challenges he faced in making that transition — the uncertainty, the learning curve of organic farming, the financial decisions that shaped whether the enterprise would survive its early years. What he gave participants was not a motivational talk. It was a working example of how the "Buhay OFW" can become a "Buhay Agri-Preneur," with real numbers, real setbacks, and real outcomes attached to it.

That kind of peer-to-peer knowledge transfer — from a returned OFW who has already navigated the transition, to OFWs who are still figuring out how to start — is more credible and more useful than any program manual.

What the Training Covered

The afternoon session was led by representatives from DTI Quirino Provincial Office, who walked participants through the fundamentals of starting and running a small business: registration processes, marketing strategies, and financial management. The pairing of DMW's livelihood assistance with DTI's business development guidance is a practical acknowledgment that startup capital without business knowledge rarely produces a sustainable enterprise.

Participants also toured Faraon's farm, observing agricultural operations firsthand and connecting the theory of the morning sessions to a working business they could walk through and ask questions about. That combination — classroom, speaker, and live farm visit in a single day — compressed the learning in ways that a seminar room alone cannot.

Why This Model Matters

The Byaheng Entrepreneur program addresses one of the most persistent gaps in OFW reintegration: the distance between receiving financial assistance and knowing what to do with it. Many returning OFWs receive livelihood packages or startup capital that goes underutilized because the business knowledge to deploy it effectively was never part of the support package.

Running the training at an actual farm built by a returned OFW, in a province where agriculture is a realistic livelihood pathway, closes that gap in a way that a conference room in a regional capital cannot. The participants in Aglipay on February 19 did not just hear about what is possible. They stood on the land where it happened.

For Quirino and the broader Cagayan Valley region, the program also signals something worth noting: reintegration support is most effective when it is brought to the province where OFWs actually live, not concentrated in regional centers that require travel and time that returning workers often cannot afford.

Returning OFWs in Quirino and across Cagayan Valley interested in the Byaheng Entrepreneur program can reach out to DMW Regional Office 2 directly. For those considering agri-enterprise as a reintegration pathway, the Faraon Integrated Farm in Aglipay is a working reference point for what is possible in the province.

Source: DMW Region 2