Region 8’s 1st ‘green’ building to rise in Tacloban

CEBU, Philippines - Tacloban City Councilor Cristina Romualdez, founder of the Comprehensive Livelihood and Entrepreneurial Program (CLEP), recently announced the coming construction of the first eco-friendly or “green” building in Eastern Visayas.

The “green” structure, also known as the CLEP building, equipped with solar panels and water catchment features, will be built with funds from the Salvation Army, which on November last year signed a memorandum of agreement for the project in partnership with the Tacloban City government, headed by Cristina’s husband, Mayor Alfred Romualdez.

Cristina, the project prime mover, said the three-storey CLEP building was designed by Architect Danny Fuentevella and will be constructed at the foot of Kanhuraw Hill at Barangay 25, Paterno Extention in this city.

Final planning of the construction was done during a recent meeting at the Tacloban City Hall, where Cristina led city officials in talks with Salvation Army officials, Tom Bowers and wife Betsy from Washington DC in the United States, and Colonel Wayne Maxwell, territorial commander representing Salvation Army-Tacloban.

Maxwell said the “green” building will be the center of the city’s CLEP programs and a venue for livelihood trainings that would transform typhoon Yolanda survivors of Tacloban and Region 8 into highly skilled and spiritually guided workers.

Cristina said the building will have offices, laboratories and rooms for CLEP classes, a showroom for the graduates’ products, and a center for conventions and conferences.

She said that CLEP courses, started in 2013, for women are cosmetology, dressmaking, reflexology, cooking, baking, food preservations, and table skirting, while the latest addition, this time for men, are courses in electrical maintenance, masonry, heavy equipment operation, carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, and welding.

At the start of its conception, CLEP was known as Cristina Learn and Earn Program and had produced many graduates through the years. It has been a priority project of Mayor Alfred’s administration with founder, Councilor Cristina, supervising its operations.

Alfred, in a separate interview, thanked the Salvation Army officials for making Tacloban the recipient of the organization’s green livelihood training center project. “We take pride of your choosing us” he added.   (FREEMAN)