Santa Josefa, a 3rd class municipality of the province of Agusan del Sur, Philippines celebrates its Taphagan Festival every year particularly at end of March.
Santa Josefa, an ecotourism municipality that incorporates the promotion of their tourism with the preservation and promotion of its discrete culture, and with a noticeable endorsement to practice agricultural-business among the people of Santa Josefa.
Considering that Santa Josefa is a vast land for planting crops like corn, rice, coconut and many more, the people of Santa Josefa are encouraged to think out of the box- to generate new kinds of innovations that would cater more source of income and to hopefully result in an increase in employment.
Majority of the people in the said municipality are farmers, that is why Taphagan represents them as one people with one culture. Long ago, the indigenous people of Santa Josefa practiced Taphag rituals to demonstrate how grateful they are for the abundance they've received. Taphag rituals are anciently led by Babaylans, a religious leader.
This year, 2015, it is the 19th Taphagan Festival and at the same time the 50th Araw ng Santa Josefa (50th year of Santa Josefa's existence), making it more historical, more special and more challenging for the people of Santa Josefa to advance in all its aspects particularly in its economy and literacy. Santa Josefa may be well-advanced in terms of its age, but still there are more room for improvements.
Personally speaking, Santa Josefa, is such a young and an unheard municipality. For the past years it has remained just the way it is if not, progressed but not efficiently. This is not to belittle my own hometown but to raise awareness that the weight of making a municipality advance and improve in all areas is neither on the sole shoulders of the government, nor on a single group of people that are regarded as "influential" or "powerful", but on every individual.
For without an individual, there would be no community. For with the absence of a dream of an individual, there would be no dream for a municipality to achieve.