What to do with pre-loved branded clothes that won’t fit anymore no matter how you have dieted the past two years? Or seemingly-useless potted plants strewn all over the backyard? Or other house stuff collecting dust, occupying space in your cabinets?
In Dumaguete, one can go on Facebook and give them away, in exchange for something currently needed during this quarantine that has rendered people immobilized or with not much cash.
Some wise entrepreneurs here set up the Dumaguete Barter Community (DBC) on Facebook last month, with a mission to provide a venue where people can acquire goods and services in a mutually-beneficial manner through the centuries-old tradition of barter.
A cursory look at the DBC page shows what personal stuff people would willingly give up in exchange for their more urgent needs like: five kilos of rice, 20 pieces of brick pavers, a kilo of cat food, garden soil, two sacks cow manure, biscuits and Yakult, etc.
According to DBC founder Cesar Ruel Raymundo Jr. , he first saw a barter community online based in Bacolod, where he hails from. But he got so frustrated he couldn’t get accepted because there were already thousands of members in just about five days of going public. “I couldn’t join other barter communities so I thought what if I just started my own group based here in Dumaguete?”
So he started the page with about 15 friends, posting a baby carseat. There were no takers. He posted another thing which was just occupying space in their house. Until his sister who works abroad was shocked to see her crib being bartered online. From then on, random people started posting personal stuff, asking in return for a snack or grass or the best sob story.
“My goal is to help people realize that our unused items at home can still be used by others,” Raymundo said. “And since many have lost their wages because no work-no pay, we need to realize we have usable resources at home that we can swap for something that we need, since we may not have cash,” he added.
He said he’s just happy to view online how people are able to help each other get what they need. Some barter traders post photos of their successful “deals”.
“No money changes hands in these transactions,” he said. “We are simply exchanging something that has lost its use for us, for another item that we currently need,” he explained. He added that the item may not anymore have value to us “but a big deal to others”.
In less than a month, the Dumaguete Barter Community gained 39,000 members, comprised mostly of entrepreneurs, homemakers, wage earners, professionals. “These are people who have been affected by the quarantine, mga isang kahig-isang tuka [people who earn just enough for the day’s meal]; those who are beginning to realize they have been hoarding too much at home and are now thinking of others who do not have but could make use of them,” noted Raymundo.
About 280 of the barter traders are based in Dubai, Singapore, Hongkong, and Doha, who simply ask their ka-barts (fellow barter trader) to exchange the items in their families’ homes here in Dumaguete.
With the overwhelming number, the group administrators had to stop approving new members for fear of not being able to monitor strict adherence to the rules and guidelines.
Some of the more important rules include: No selling/cash transactions. Requests for exchange items should cost 30 to 50 percent lower than the value of the thing being bartered. No private messages allowed for a fair open-barter system, or one could be blocked from the private group.
The requests for preferred items can be tricky. Even if the owner believes it’s an expensive item he is giving away, he can only barter it for something that is at least half its price. Raymundo cited asking for plants in exchange for a sack of rice, or baby’s formula milk for a refrigerator, “or it defeats the purpose of the system which is to simply help others”.
Helen Bejerano, 58 year-old mother of four, noted that members appreciate the various clothes she puts up for exchange, making her one of the top barter traders in DBC. “It’s my way of decluttering my daughters’ rooms from the piled-up tinubuan (outgrown clothes).” She said the platform offered by DBC has helped them clean up their house, while at the same time, gaining ingredients like cream cheese and butter for their online bakeshop called Troieats.
She recalled receiving a tiny indoor plant from a member who only wanted in return “some snacks for her child”. So they agreed to meet at the home of the one offering the plant. Bejerano said she got to meet the child, and handed her snack items: biscuits, chocolates, and Yakult. She said she so moved by their plight of losing work, she also gave them a dressed chicken and a tray of eggs. “On my way home, I just felt so happy making others happy.”
Another top barter member, entrepreneur Bernice Uy-Dacanay, remembers exchanging a pair of rubber shoes (hardly-used due to a defect on the shoelace hole) with a member who pleaded her husband didn’t have a decent pair of shoes. They agreed to meet by 8:30 in the evening, and on the dot, the couple was there, ready to get the Adidas for two bottles of Pocari Sweat. “I also brought pakapin toys for their baby. It made me happy to see them happy!”
She said that being active in barter with DBC blends well with her work as cake artist the past nine years. She said she’s always online on Facebook where she advertises her “Cake Love” products and services. Dacanay said as she is renovating her kitchen, she now barters her pre-loved items with bags of cement, bricks, and tiles, etc.
On another occasion, Dacanay and Raymundo thought of bartering a box of vitamins, some cocoa packs, and a bag for the most heartwarming reply to the question Para kanino ka bumabangon? (Who do you get up for?) The goodies went to a boy who recounted that he wakes up everyday by dawn to help his mother buy fruits at the market that they could sell and make fruit mix.
“Through this bartering system, we are able to give happiness to the ones we deal with. It’s fun because there’s no money involved, just hangyo (bargain) whatever we have for whatever the other can give,” Dacanay said. “When done out of love for your neighbor, bartering is humbling and fulfilling.”
She said that through the Focolare Movement’s Sinag Volunteers’ Project, DBC also helped collect diapers, bedsheets, and crutches for patients at the pediatric ward of the Negros Oriental Provincial Hospital.
Luanne Cadayday is another top barter trader at DBC, while not busy as a teacher at Sta. Catalina National High School during the quarantine. “At first, kalingawan ra ang pagbarter (bartering was just a passing fancy) until I realized how it could actually help others, while helping myself.”
She noted that people actually don’t ask for much. They get thrilled with the little things like herbs, succulents, and kitchen utensils.
Cadayday had shared a post by one Nathalyn Rosano Gabas, asking to help a certain Jocelyn in San Isidro, Pamplona. “So I posted my ‘branded bag with flaws (faded) for five kilos of rice/corn for Jocelyn’,” who lives across the northern part of the Province. What followed next was beyond her expectation: DBC members extended more help for Jocelyn, including a wheelchair and medicines.
“When we barter for someone else’s cause, more people pitch in to help, so it becomes more meaningful,” Cadayday said. She added that many DBC members based abroad also sent their help through their relatives here in the Province. “It made me realize there are still many kind-hearted people out there in the sidelines. Helping those who are seriously in need makes our hearts flutter.”
Another top barter trader, Priscilla Shirabe, recounted how she would do spring cleaning every year, getting rid of anything not needed anymore, and selling them as ukay-ukay (second-hand stuff for a bargain) to her staff and neighbors. This time, she decided to trade her spring cleaning items on DBC.
“Bartering has been a big help for me because it’s a simple give-and-take transaction,” this Bulakeña explained in Tagalog. She said that while it enables her to lessen the mess in their house due to too much stuff lying around, the recipient is also able to make use of them. “Di ba may kasabihan, (There’s a saying): One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
And what does Shirabe ask in exchange? In almost all her bartering transactions, she would request for a kilo of dogfood or a kilo of catfood. Over and over again the past month.
This is because Shirabe, who takes care of five pet dogs, also looks after nine rescued dogs and 15 rescued cats that she was compelled to adopt when a local rescue group here disbanded. “The ones left behind were those who did not seem attractive (including blind dog ‘Lucky’ who figured in an accident), those with sicknesses, and askals (asong kalye or street dogs with no breed) roaming the beach.
To sustain the hobby, she and her husband had established years back a pet store, selling animal clothes and other accessories imported from Japan. Income from the store provided for the expenses of feeding the animals, including veterinary costs. This time during the quarantine, she barters her store inventory for food for the animals. “I’m not worried I don’t get my ROI from the pet store, as long as our house pets are able to eat.”
Shirabe said her other favorite request for exchange is garden soil and cow manure to maintain the garden at SeaForest Resort in Ajong in the town of Sibulan which she manages (closed during this quarantine).
“This quarantine has given us time to declutter, and sort through things we no longer need but which are still useful to others,” noted Atty. Pristine Raymond-Martinez, a member of many online barter communities here. “It also made us appreciate basic needs delivered to us, without having to go to the supermarket.”
She said she would not easily give up an expensive pre-loved top but would willingly exchange it for two bunglay (weeding trowels). Or trade a once-worn lace dress for eggs and flour.
“Bartering through these online groups is about saving yourself a trip to the market, getting something useful in exchange for something you no longer need, and helping someone in the process,” Martinez said.
Go Trade Dumaguete, another barter community with more than 10,000 members, began as a group of friends keen on recycling and upcycling. Pre-CoViD, they would organize rummage sales and bazaars twice a year, until they established a boutique called Twice New. “When the CoViD crisis happened and the barter craze started to build up, my friends and I decided to open a barter group, and make it a fun and flexible experience where anyone who has WiFi can post their item anytime, anyday,” said Go Trade founder Veronica Valente-Vicuña.
“With many among us unemployed now, bartering lessens the burden on our pockets; while at the same time, decluttering and beautifying our homes,” Vicuña noted. “Monstera Deliciosa (Swiss chess plant), anyone?,” she added.
For her part, cake stylist Anale Aves-Dancel said that in less than a month of being actively involved in the barter community, she has been able to reshape the landscape of her pocket garden at home. “I have collected plants that I would not have been able to afford (Philodendron Prince of Orange for a tray of eggs), and I was able to finally complete my banca garden. I am a happy trader!”
For the weekends, the Dumaguete Barter Community evolves into the Saturday Farmers’ Tabo, held from 12 noon until 4pm fronting the Sidlakan Negros Showroom along EJ Blanco Drive. This is the only time when cash transactions are allowed as well.
Then as a rule, DBC observes the Sabbath. Any bartering or sheer give-aways on Charity Sunday is done only to benefit a third party (barter-for-a-cause). Also allowed are appreciation posts, pampa-good vibes, and success stories, Raymundo said.
“This community of bartering has encouraged us to declutter our homes. Aside from that, the things we are giving up that we may have been storing the past two years are given new life by the new owners – who may actually need them,” said one doctor.
“Innovation is at the heart of something becoming popular. The corona crisis rendered a lot of people cashless, and less mobile because of the quarantine. If you put bartering on a social media platform like FB, you have an innovation that’s bound to be popular,” noted Melanie Macias, who barters with Go Trade Dumaguete.
Raymundo said the sustainability of the online barter community in the new normal depends not on the number of members in the thousands, “but on the quality…the values of the members who genuinely want to help others”.
“As volunteers in this online community, we are just happy when barter deals are closed successfully, people are happy with what they got, then many times, kapinan pa ka (you are given extra) other items,” noted Raymundo, a food concessionaire in one BPO company, after teaching Entrepreneurship for six years at La Salle-Bacolod.
Aside from Raymundo, the other DBC volunteers who approve online requests are: Princess Stephanie Ong, Princess Kimberly Ong-Piñero, Rica Isabel Sojor, Rossel Jade Tuting, Sherry-Ann Tuting, Hazel Pinili, Gemjoy Contiveros, Alpheus Simon Infante, Marie Grace Nacua, Fritzie Concepcion, Rod Francis Romero, Ivy Muriel Trayvilla, Clarisse Kay Sy, Isabella Francesca Corgos, and Heather Perocho. (Irma Faith Pal)
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