Ninety (90) local businesses across Northern Mindanao committed to better their businesses and to stay resilient in the midst of the pandemic as they undergo a three-month online mentorship program from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Region 10.

DTI-Northern Mindanao launched the first batch of its Kapatid Mentor Me- Money Market Encounter (KMME-MME) Program for the year.

KMME is a flagship program of DTI in partnership with the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship. It is a ten-module mentorship program that started in 2016. It optimizes weekly face-to-face interactions between mentors and mentees with the aim of boosting entrepreneurial capacity.

“Halos immediately after lockdown noong 15 March of last year, April, we already started the KMME Online. It was quite fast,” DTI Undersecretary Blesila A. Lantayona said during the official launching and orientation of the first batch of the DTI-Region 10 KMME-MME Online program. “We commit to continue to support our MSMEs in all of the regions and particularly those mentees na nandito sa ating Kapatid Mentor ME Program.”

“We continue to look forward to what the KMM-MME Online program can do for our MSMEs especially in navigating the reformed business operations in these extraordinary times. We hope to continue capacitating our MSMEs and help them make better decisions for their businesses,” DTI Northern Mindanao OIC-Regional Director Ermedio Abang added.

Forty (40) mentees from Lanao del Norte, Misamis Occidental, and Misamis Oriental will go through the mentorship online while 22 mentees from Bukidnon and 20 from Camiguin will have a hybrid physical and online mentorship.

Each mentee will finish the module with a presentation of Business Improvement Plan (BIP) to an expanded panel of evaluators composed of representatives from banks, online market platforms, and other business support organizations. ♦

Date of Release: 29 March 2021