I am grateful for being part of the Local Government Academy's training program for local government units on Local Economic Development (LED) online course. The course was composed of nine (9) lessons and ran for 7 weeks with 30 training days. The design of the course was blended with primarily asynchronous content and activities and four (4) live interactive sessions. Every week, numerous activities provided hands- on learning experiences that significantly contributed to my understanding of the LED.

Under Lesson 1, we were tasked to share a 90 secs video on  how the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 changed our personal and professional life. We also listed the pains/challenges of our municipality on how our government reacted, responded, and addressed the pandemic situation during the crisis and the gains/ motivators that we got. We also created an image of what our regular day looks like (24- hour clock) during the pandemic. The objective of the exercise was to see how we have adapted to the conditions of our disrupted environment.

Under Lesson Two, we prepared a short presentation in either thru a blog post, visual aid presentation, or video about the basic information about our LGU that contained the basic demographic data of our hometown and the economic descriptors of the industries or enterprises that provide employment and livelihood to the people. 

I also enumerated some things that make people lives difficult based on my views as well as the things that motivate them to be happy by creating an Empathy Map. Empathy is the ability to understand and relate to the feelings of another person or group of people. This is the first step in the design thinking process that enables one to see the realities of the people or community that one intends to help. The act of empathizing requires the use of our senses in inquiring about the conditions and situations of our target groups. This is also the first step in developing an entrepreneurial mindset in solving problems by creating value to satisfy needs. Then we also formulated the 5 why questions to identify the root cause of a problem, this was the next step in the design thinking process which is defining the problem of our hometown and our kabayan during COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, calamity-prone area, and maybe even a governance problem.

Under Lesson 4, we were tasked to design a flowchart by using a Mindmap. Based on what I learned from the lecture video, I creatively designed the components of the LED process to our LGU's context and iterated the five (5) steps process that were most applicable to the its needs or problems.

Under Lesson 5, we come up with two (2) analytical exercises. The  PESTLE Model and the SWOT Analysis. The first one is the result in checking out the situation and condition of our hometown Pagudpud. The six areas of analysis was eessential in capturing a more comprehensive picture of our place. While the SWOT Analysis is the identified strengths of our municipality, its weaknesses, the potential opportunities, and the threats to its development. Strengths and weaknesses are internal characteristics that our municipality can do something about while opportunities and threats are external factors that we can overcome with our strengths.

Finally, under Lesson 6, out last activity was to create a Business Model Canvas (BMC). This was a tool, which helped us organized and put our ideas into actionable items that were realistic, feasible, and doable by compiling all the results of our exercises since the beginning of our online course.

Every task required as to think critically to come up with an equitable outcome. And, as I navigated thru the course, I was equipped with valuable knowledge and insights in fostering sustainable economic growth in the local area. Infrastructure development, business incubation programs, investment promotion program initiatives, job generation, employment facilitation, skills training, support for MSMEs are some priorities in the LED program that will uplifts the community and quality of life of the people.

Overall, experiences, learning, creation and submission of outputs and collaboration with my co- participants were the best parts of my LED Journey.