The mountainous, steep terrain, and cool climate of Lubuagan, Kalinga is home to the preservers of the northern highlands culture for many centuries. Lubuagan is where you can find the women with dexterous hands and whose creative pieces reflect Kalinga’s culture.

However when the women of Lubuagan visited Manila, the group felt a climate far different from Lubuagan—a warm welcome from the visitors, and an appreciation from the fair buyers and visitors.

Backstrap weaving is the skill of 90% of Kalinga women, and the loomwoven products from this tradition became a One Town, One Product (OTOP) of the municipality. In backstrap weaving, women tie the loom around their waist while the other end is tied to a tree or post. This kind of traditional weaving makes the Kalinga woman weaver a part of the loom.

Riza Marie Cabalo, the Designer from the Product Development and Design Center of the Philippines, assisted Lubuagan Weaving to come up with bag designs that creatively combined the traditional patterns of Kalinga and the functionality of modern design. Most of the featured products used blue pigment to symbolize the sky, and red dye for the earth, from which the wealth grows. These colors are usually seen in kilae and gilamat patterns (plain weave). Yellow is also dominant in the featured products, that represents wealth, while the zig-zag patterns represent mountains (which can be found in Ilagliss pattern), the home of the Lubuagan tribe. And the stars and insects patterns as fertility symbols (usually seen in sinanbituwon pattern).

Lubuagan Weaving is just one of the micro, small, and medium enterprises featured at the NTF. NTF is one of the government’s platform to stimulate the interests of local and foreign buyers on the products that are truly Filipino.

This year, NTF will showcase over 900 new product designs from the 17 regions of the Philippines, starting March 12-16 at the SM Megatrade Halls of the SM Megamall.

Other fair highlights are: (1) One Town One Product (OTOP) Philippines, a priority program of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that aims to promote entrepreneurship and create jobs, will feature products of select towns using indigenous materials, local skills and talents; as well as (2) Raw Materials Setting featuring semi-processed forms and new applications of ten raw materials with enormous potential: such as banana (bark, leaves, bud), coconut (coir, peat, bark, wood, fiber), corn (cob, husk, silk), fish scales, Manila palm (branch, twigs, fruits, fiber), recycled materials such as tin cans and plastic, sabutan leaves, water hyacinth (leaves and stems), tahong shells, and woven fibers made of abaca, buntal, and raffia.

NTF is organized by the Center for International Trade Exhibitions and Missions (CITEM), in cooperation with the DTI Regional Operations Group, Philippine Trade Training Center, Product Design and Development Center of the Philippines, Bureau of Domestic Trade, and the Bureau of Small and Medium Enterprise Development.

For more information, please contact:

Special Projects Division

Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions (CITEM)

T: 8312336. 8312201 locals 261,263,276,277

E: sprojects@citem.com.ph

W: www.ntf.com.ph