Lessons from the Ilaw ng Buhay Program 666

Both in-house evaluation and independent studies commissioned by UNICEF, the donor agency, confirmed the effectiveness of the Ilaw ng Buhay approach to community development as field-tested in several cities and municipalities in the Philippines from 1978 to 1982. The innovative features, as compared to the conventional extension-type approach, are as follows:

• the use of the neighborhood group, as against the sectoral grouping e.g. fisherfolks, farmers, women, youth, etc., makes possible the broad-based identification of community needs;
• interviewing "reference families" from among the poorest in the community and visiting public markets, as well as doing consultation work with local leaders, adds relevance to pre-packaged core messages during training; 
• use of emotional appeal and  religious symbolism ensures acceptance of messages by the target audience; 
• deployment of senior development workers in field teams makes possible the success of the jawbone approach or facilitating social preparation work with communities and households (lower jaw) and local government units (upper jaw); and 
• child-based concerns as entry points for community diagnosis and program content neutralizes opposition from groups which have issues against the government.

The Crazy Co., as the organization which implemented the Ilaw approach was called, felt the pressure to institutionalize the program as strategy or requirement for replication. There must be a way to get the aging members of the team to act more as mentors rather than as field operatives and help multiply the number of development workers who could carry out the approach.

Thus the idea for establishing the Ilaw International Center (IIC) was born. As part of UNICEF's support to the concept, we were sent to take up some short courses at the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (BARD) and at the Project Planning Center at the University of Bradford in Yorkshire, England.

Our brief stay in these institutions gave us the opportunity to research further on how to bring about an institution that would replace eventually the Crazy Co. in the propagation of the innovative approach to community development.

We were about to enroll at the University of Swansea in late 1982 to take up a Master's degree course when Atty. Ramon P. Binamira summoned us back to the Philippines to head the team that would establish the center in Tagbilaran City in Bohol. Among the team members handpicked for the mission  were Dr. Pomie Buot, a medical doctor who used to head the Project Compassion team in Misamis Occidental; Rogelio Alegado, a former teacher from Digos, Davao who was recruited as local development trainer and eventually joined the regular staff; Eleno Laga, seasoned community development worker and head of the team in Guindulman, Bohol; Ver Lumacang, Project Compassion head of Tagbilaran City; and Ben Benitez, veteran trainer from the Tagbilaran team.

The others from the Crazy Co. would come for a visit of two to three weeks from Manila to reenforce the team: the deputies of Atty. Binamira, Bitoy Ramos, Pio Almodiel and Ben Garcia; Admin Officer Oco Orozco; Training Officer Ike Tolentino and Information Officer Bimboy Penaranda. Later, members from teams outside Manila, would also come for assignments at the IIC : Raul Tiosayco and Sims Leal from Iloilo; Gem Legarta from Misamis Occidental; Fred Leano from the Ilocos.

A research staff was formed headed by Tonette Zablan from University of San Carlos. Other young people came to join the staff: Arecio Inting, marine biologist; researchers Cheche Pandy, Leila Manding, Weng Prado, Victor Dequito, trainers Melia Dalagan, the Solera couple Yolly Arboladura was designated as librarian but also assisted in administration and training.

Chris D'Silva, a Bangladeshi,  served as volunteer driver-mechanic in those early days. More staff were hired as the IIC expanded its facilities to include a mess hall which doubled up as a restaurant at night and a dormitory for participants which also admitted guests to raise much-needed revenues for the center. 

How the IIC was built from concept to reality could be an interesting read and source of valuable lessons, too.

More on this in the next blog.

Lessons from Ilaw ng Buhay 555

In Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Program, three 20-family units, which roughly constitute a sub-village or purok , compose a neighborhood association or chapter. This cluster of puroks elects its own set of officers.

All the household heads undergo what is known as FIT or Family Ilaw Training, which is done in the village, right where the participants live, using available venues, such as a classroom, a barangay center, or even under the shade of  a tree.

 How was the FIT conducted by the Ilaw team and its local counterparts known as Local Development Trainers?

Each FIT class starts with a ceremony which proceeds as follows:

-a torch is lighted usually by the head of the village, the Mayor or any representative from either the village or municipal councils;

-each participant lights a candle from the torch as everybody sings the Ilaw song;  and

-the Ilaw Credo is recited by the participants led by the chapter  president.

The religious symbolism and overtones were introduced as an innovation to ensure seriousness of purpose on the part of the participants. This was in contrast with community training done by government agencies and NGOs which assumed the format of  technical training.

As introduction to the training proper, the lead trainer provides an overview about the training, its objectives, and how each participant can make the training activity successful by contributing to the topic being discussed. These topics include those programs integrated in the Ilaw ng Buhay approach: health and nutrition, backyard food production, family planning and environmental management. 

The innovation introduced here was for the trainer to talk about the actual poverty situation of the barangay and the common problems met by majority of households.  Most of the information gathered came from the poverty profile prepared by the team which included interview of “reference families,” those considered as among the poorest. 

From these interviews, the Ilaw team gathered information related to the consumption habits of the households and used this during the training. For example, the trainer would calculate the expenses for cigarettes and alcoholic drinks and used this to show that this amount could be better spent for food and school needs, etc.

Other information gathered from interviews with selected families would include:

-their reasons for having more than the number of children they could afford “to feed, shelter and educate” and use these reasons as basis for discussing responsible parenthood during the training;

-how each family uses time and own assets as resources to pursue goals to introduce the concept of short-term and long-term planning at household level;

-how each family regards environmental assets such as trees, soil, air, rivers, sea, fish and other marine life, etc.  and determine their awareness about ecological issues so as to bring these issues as close as possible to their everyday experience.

One indicator of success for FIT is if attendance increases from the first night to the next two nights. Each session builds on the previous one to gain understanding and interest and, finally, on the final session, there should have been developed on the part of the participant the urgency to act on the basis of their understanding of the various inputs.

Our experience was that this type of training attended by family heads generated sustained interest and were generally well-attended as we went farther beyond the poblacion. In villages near the center of the town, there was stiff competition from TV, movies and other community activities, whereas in the relatively remote places, the Family Ilaw Training with its unique ceremonies and rituals attracted more participants night after night for their being the “only game in town.”

Since our group had members from both the regular extension-type training and the innovative FIT, the consensus was that the latter had the greater potential to create impact in terms of message absorption and application.

The only problem would be how to replicate it without using older more experienced trainers and staff.

More next blog.

Lessons from the Ilaw ng Buhay Program 444

Let me recall here the experiences and lessons learned under the UNICEF-assisted Ilaw ng Buhay program pilot-tested in several municipalities and cities in the 70s and 80s as part of efforts to seek more effective ways to work with local governments and communities in the planning, implementation and monitoring of service delivery from the center to the periphery of any municipality or city.

On packaging and delivery of core messages 

For each of the program areas (backyard food production or Green Revolution; nutrition; family planning; and environmental management) integrated in the umbrella program, a set of core messages had to be determined prior to the conduct of any training or orientation.

The core messages under backyard food production, for example, will include the following:

• Plant only those crops that are easy to take care of; will not require chemical fertilizer and pesticides; preferably perennial; and are known to prevent malnutrition and ensure good health as attested by our ancestors or old people in the village
• These crops, include malunggay, alugbati, patani, sequidillas, sweet potato, papaya, guava, etc. 
• Planting materials can easily be provided by neighbors or relatives 
• Plant now because tomorrow you may have malnourished and sick children 
• Planting these crops on the backyard will mean family savings 

 Prior to giving the training inputs or orientation, the trainer is expected to observe what the people are actually planting on their backayard, if they plant at all, and what they are buying or selling in the public market (or during market days in villages or towns). Pertinence is the key principle to follow in planning core messages. A message should be useful to the audience and the latter must confirm during the training that the inputs are truly useful to them.

In planning for the training inputs, the trainer has to determine what is called the EB (Emotional Basis) for his input. The EB is actually the emotional vehicle for the messages, something that is held dear by the participants around which the technical inputs are wrapped or pegged to ensure easy acceptance of the message. Examples of EBs are: people's innate love and concern for children; their being proud of their village or town; preference for peaceful and less complicated life; ability to keep the family intact, and so on.

Although there are training modules and detailed guide for each input, the trainer has to be flexible in actually delivering the inputs. What matters is to keep close to giving the core messages in whatever means or form as long as the people get and accept them as basis for action.

The test of a successful input on backyard food production is when those who have attended the training will ask questions on the subject matter covered or if they say they will get branches of malunggay and start planting the following day.

The last core message for an Ilaw training input always calls for putting to action whatever is learned.  Hence, there is a clear distinction between information giving and training, which is supposed to influence future action based on what has been learned.

This adherence to simple and actionable messages has been based on the observation that in most training activities, there is a disconnect between what is being learned and the actions that are expected from an increment in knowledge and/or skills.

Pertinence in the content, packaging and delivery of services is a key lesson we learned from the Ilaw ng Buhay Program years ago.

More next blog.

Lessons from the Ilaw ng Buhay Program 333

In talking about lessons learned from the old Ilaw ng Buhay community development approach pilot-tested in several provinces in the Philippines during the late 70s to early 80s, it may be necessary to recall what were called during the period as "typologies of participation." These so-called typologies actually provide a convenient basis for looking at the way working with communities was viewed and practised by government agencies and NGOs.

These approaches are as follows:

• the standard community development (CD) or extension-type approach which is basically focused on linking up government services to local communities compartmentalized as to their needs, e.g. agriculture, health, social welfare, local infrastructure, etc.;  
• the community organizing (CO) approach which adopts a no-linkage-with-government policy and seeks to build people's organizations able to decide on their own and deal with government using their organization as leverage to get services delivered or to be treated as equal partner in local-level planning; 
• the combined CO-CD approach which uses the planning and implementation of service delivery to specific communities and households as entry point in having organized communities able to serve as partners of both government and NGOs in all aspects of participatory development; and 
• the insurrection approach or sometime referred to playfully as the against-all-odds (AAO) approach practised by the underground left of various shades of red which utilizes elements from the three approaches to achieve its end to overthrow the Government with armed uprising through political and community action. 

The Ilaw ng Buhay (INB) approach is actually a variant of the CO-CD approach. It provides an innovation of the first two approaches and seeks to make the third approach more effective in several aspects as it competes directly with the insurrection approach in many remote villages during the 70s and 80s.

The INB provided a vehicle for the mixed group of community development pioneers, professionals from various disciplines other than ComDev, and a few who had knowledge of the underground to share experiences together, distill lessons and set new ways to work with both local governments and target communities.

While most NGOs, including those who were not from the Left, would shy away from working with Government, the INB positioned its approach as the jawbone or "upper jaw lower jaw" approach which says for the benefits of development to be shared by all, both jaws must be able to work together.

Hence, this modified approach calls for a new type of development worker in terms of track record, age and degree of commitment; skills to deal with politicians of various persuasions; religious and NGO leaders and volunteers; and the flexibility and stamina to deal with competition from fiercely devoted community organizers and advocates from either an organized Left underground or even with leaders and followers of religious sects in the countryside.

How to make Ilaw ng Buhay approach works under the most trying circumstances, political, economic, social was the mission the Crazy Co. undertook during a critical period in the country's history characterized by restrictions of  human rights and increasing polarization at all levels of society due to divisive ideologies and the competition for resources among the elites.

More on the next blog.

Lessons from the "Ilaw ng Buhay" Program 222

The "Ilaw ng Buhay" (Light of Life) program pilot-tested from 1978 to 1981 in several municipalities and cities in the Philippines was conceptualized during a three-month assessment conference participated in by the pioneers of community development led by Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, considered the Father of Community Development; technical specialists in disciplines related to backyard food production, nutrition, environmental management, health and family planning; and young interns from the Department of Human Ecology, University of the Philippines at Los Banos, who eventually served as the planning and research staff after their graduation.

Initially, it was named as a Movement but eventually this was changed to  Program to make it  more acceptable in those days of the martial law regime which considered as illegal any assembly of more than three people.

Its key features were based on assessments made on the strengths and weaknesses of programs carried out under the category of Community Development in the country, basically those under the old Presidential Assistant on CD (PACD) and its successor, the Department of Local Government and Community Development (DLGCD).

The experiences of community based programs were also studied and reported to the 40 or so participants of the assessment conference. These programs included those under primary health care of the Department of Health; the integrated rural development programs of  the extension department of UP Los Banos; UP Institute of Social Welfare and Community Development; and the community-based projects of  the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and NGOs such as COPE, ACES, and others who were initially involved in community organizing approaches characterized with a no-linkage with government policy.

UNICEF Manila which supported this activity as part of efforts to find more effective participatory development strategies in line with the global advocacy for Basic Services Strategy provided references and resource persons on outstanding examples of community development programs in South Korea (Saemul Undong or New Village Movement);  Thailand (community-based child care and health programs); and Indonesia (community planning and nutrition).

The community organizing strategy of the country's underground movement was also reported and studied by the participants in the assessment conference on community-based approaches.

The various discussions and field-testing of community organizing and training modules in barangay Pahinga Norte in Candelaria, Quezon resulted in a distinct approach which became known as "Ilaw ng Buhay" approach to community development.

More in the next blog.

Lessons from Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Program 111

Let me give in to some friends who suggest I take a break from my remembrance of the community development pioneers and fieldworkers I worked with in the past, which covers the period 1975 to 1989.
So far in this blogspot I have talked about eight pioneers and four fieldworkers and showed what I and other younger fieldworkers at that time learned from them.

Those twelve co-workers had passed away long before my blogs. I am only playing tribute to their memory and specific contributions to community development practice in the country. It may be a remote possibility, but I am also thinking that perhaps some young people may be reading these blogs and they may start to appreciate development work of this nature, going out to where most of the action is happening, right at the precise contact point between the local government and the people.

Based on what I have observed in the course of my professional community development work in the Philippines and 14 other countries during the last 37 years, I conclude that government bureaucracy tends to be weak at that point of contact with the people. NGOs, on the other hand, lack the funding resources, commitment and mandate to organize communities who are able to partner systematically with local governments in development planning and implementation.

Our involvement in two initiatives, Project Compassion and Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Program for 13 years, 1975 to 1989, yielded some insights or findings which found their way in in both my Master of Management and PhD dissertations under UNICEF sponsorship. When I left to assume the post of Community Development Specialist for the Integrated Atoll Development Project (IADP) under UNDP and UNOPS, it was basically the Ilaw ng Buhay community development approach that was the basis of my technical work with projects in the countries where I was assigned.

By the time I left my last country of assignment, Solomon Islands, in Dec 2001, I had a total of 15 years of field experience related to the promotion of the Ilaw ng Buhay approach in community development work. It also guided the technical advice I gave to partner organizations in subsequent work: Consultant on Poverty Reduction and Governance, Provincial Government of Bohol, and Head, Bohol Poverty Reduction Management Office (2002 to 2005 - 3 years); Regional Program Manager for Southeast Asia, Habitat for Humanity International (2005 to 2007 - 2 years); and my work with projects funded by CIDA and EU (2008 to the present - 4 years).

Hence, it can be said, for the last 24 years it has been the Ilaw ng Buhay approach which provided the framework of my engagement with projects as far as community development is concerned.

I agree with my close friends I should now proceed to tell development colleagues about the lessons learned from the advocacy and practice of this approach which, understandably, cannot be articulated by its original name in the diverse countries where I have been involved in something like 28 projects spanning almost four decades of my professional life.

More on this next blog. 

Remembering Fieldworkers 444

FRANCISCO ABALOS

Frank majored in Animal Husbandry when he was studying at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos. He joined the Green Revolution staff at Nayong Pilipino as livestock specialist. When the staff were reorganized into field teams, he was assigned as member of the team in Quezon. His primary responsibility was to look after the integrated program in the municipality of Candelaria.

He was basically a technical guy. At the drop of a coin or a beer bottle, if you choose, since beer drinking was his favorite vice, he could deliver inputs about how to raise chickens, pigs, cows, goats, carabaos or water buffaloes. He had all the skills of a good animal husbandry major: castrating animals; selecting stock; feeding hogs and chickens.

I was ahead of him by a year in college, but we were classmates in one or two subjects and probably more because I was among the irregulars, those who would attend classes as they pleased. Or those who got distracted by life outside the classroom and they would fail in their subjects in exchange for some gains in out-of-school experiences. Translation: hanging around with fraternity brothers and getting pointers how to be streetwise; joining protest actions; going to nearby villages for some rural life immersions which would end inevitably to discussion about the possibility of agrarian revolution; wondering how a cosmic God could possibly care about what you think, reading and discussing with close friends, even if these were not required, the works of Sarte, Kierkegaard, Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, etc.; hold book review sessions at the Chem dept corridor as the rest of the campus were busy with their own distractions on Friday nights, and so on.

In college, Frank earned the monicker, "Kawawang Koboy," after his favorite song. He would sing, whistle and hum it at the drop of a hat. This guy limped and the original singer of the song, Fred Panopio, also had a short leg. I believe that was the connection. He was also a member of a rodeo team which had to test its skills in throwing down bulls in a yearly contests of masculinity and male ego. This guy would walk in with his limp and the whole crowd would sing his favorite song, "Kawawang Cowboy."

He was around 30 years old at that time he joined the Crazy Co. At that young age, he sat at the foot of the masters, the gurus from the community development pioneering days. He was successively mentored in the team by such gurus as Pio Almodiel, Kaka Dimaano, Nards Belen, Bitoy Ramos.

One important thing he learned. which was not taught in Community Development textbooks, was this:

-Know thy Mayor. Get all the facts about him even his vices. Be close with him. Stick to him like a leech.
 In that way he will come to accept you as a friend and he can listen better to your "core messages," a
 favorite phrase among us during the period.

Unfortunately, in fully integrating with the Mayor, Frank forgot to tell him about the core messages of his development mission. He spent a lot of time drinking with the Mayor and going with him to every cockfight in town. He was the one transformed by the Mayor into a drunkard and cockpit habitue.

We pulled him out from Candelaria and quarantined him in Nayong Pilipino for two weeks so he would unlearn all the things he got from close association with the Mayor. We all took turns to reconfigure the guy so he could be a development worker once again.

He emerged from all the counseling sessions to become among the best fieldworker in the organization. Candelaria became one of the model Project Compassion municipalities. It was visited by the UNICEF Representative, Mrs. Mimi, an indication that he won the trust and confidence of the entire Crazy Co. in his ability to mobilize support for children through sheer hard work at convincing the Mayor and other political leaders, along with relevant government officers.

I recall shedding a tear or two when news reached me abroad that he died due to heart attack. Frank Abalos was definitely among the last of the great fieldworkers in the 70s and 80s. May his tribe stop decreasing!

Remembering Fieldworkers 333

BAYANI P. DEQUITO

Bay must have been around 60 when I met him in Lapulapu City in Mactan in the 70s when he was the City Secretary and at the same time what in the organization was called the Green Revolution Field Program Officer. His task was to promote backyard food production.

He was cousin to both Mayor Patalinghug and Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, our boss in the "Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life)" program, which integrated social development projects such as nutrition, family planning and environmental management. In our organizational set-up, the field program officer of the most visible program in the area would automatically be the team leader of the integrated program.

In Bay's case, he was appointed team leader because of his clout among local officials on account of his kinship with Mayor Patalinghug and RPB. In the Philippine context, this often works at local level more than citing the name of the First Lady, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos, the titular head of Project Compassion. He did not belong among the community development pioneers, but he viewed himself as a practical guy who learned his lessons about extension work by using common sense and getting close to the people as possible.

Unilike his millionnaire cousins, he grew up always renting a house in Lapulapu City because he said he could not afford to build his own due to his meager salary as government employee. I knew him in the course of my work with the Green Revolution Center as information officer at the national office at Nayong Pilipino and as Special Assistant to RPB when Ilaw ng Buhay was conceptualized and later pilot-tested in the late 70s. You can say that if Mr. Garcia was the bullshit guy in admin and finance, I was his counterpart in planning and program operations.

I made sure that all field teams follow the Operations Guide and if there were deviations, then we had to sit down and sort out some adjustments so the Guide would be followed. On this matter, we would often cite what popular Crispa basketball coach and incidentally the winningest coach in the country's basketball history,would say to his team, "I do not care if  we win or lose as long as you follow the game plan," the good coach would say. "If we win because you deviated, it was no good because we could not evaluate the plan."

I was the one who would look for revisionists, as the political left would say, and then admonish them to follow the Party line.

In Bay Dequito's case, I had a perfect example of revisionist often stubborn but always in a non-adversarial way and so I found it hard to argue with him. He had his own bag of tactics and I did not succeed to make  him  follow the Operations Guide. Bay showed me, a guy 30 years his junior, that deviations could make us win the game!

In the Guide, the team was supposed to hold formal orientation seminars for local officials. Bay refused to do so. He preferred that his team go to each political leader and agency head and have a one-on-one sessions. He said nobody learned anything in those formal orientation sessions. His Mayor, for instance, disliked formalities and would go around the city hall premises in slippers and dressed only in kamiseta. The Mayor was delighted if some people would mistake him as the janitor.

Now, Bay would ask, how could you deal with a guy like this Mayor? So in talking to him about backyard food production, he would do  in a series of mini-conversations with him often in the Mayor's residence or on the ground of the Government building where the Mayor loved to walk around instead of going up to his office.

Then Bay discovered that the Mayor had some issues with Atty. Binamira. They knew each other since childhood and the Mayor looked at RPB as a spoiled brat who was just good in talking. In school. The Mayor remembered that Bay would often protect RPB from bullies, picking up a few fights to defend him. To the Mayor, RPB was just good in talking and could not translate his lectures into something concrete.

Bay sensed this simmering conflict between the two and he made use of it. He challenged the Mayor to convert his one-hectare property on the island as a demonstration area for backyard food production. Bay's line to the Mayor was he would help the Mayor prove he could do more to the program if he could actually plan and grow the crops that RPB and the Green Revolution team were only talking about.

That was how Lapulapu City became famous in having a demonstration garden on what Bay called limestone agriculture. Mayor Patalinghug and Bay succeeded to grown string beans, sequidillas, pechay, malunggay, breadfruit and other Green Revolution crops  grow luxuriantly on very thin topsoil on the pice of land that the Mayor owned. That was how Bay Dequito earned his spurs in the Crazy Co. He is known until now  for his famous line during the period, "There is no barren soil; only barren minds"

Most of the trees that you find on the island, the giant ipil-ipil trees, breadfruit  and others that line major streets were planted during his time. I remember him when I see these trees and often I find myself saying, "Bay, how about rising from the dead, and teach the young generation in your own inimitable way how to take care of these trees and plant  real trees and crops and not have these only in Farmville."

My dear Bay, kindly rise up from the dead and deviate from any Operations Guide there and the Lord will  understand. We need your more here than in either hell or heaven.  










 

In the Company of ComDev Pioneers 888

BIENVENIDO GARCIA

If there was someone who would be considered as the son-of-the-bitch guy whom we worked with among community development pioneers, Mr. Ben Garcia would be that person. Understandably so because aside from being the Deputy of Atty. Ramon P. Binamira for the Green Revolution program, Mr. Garcia handled the Admin and Finance functions for all three national programs (Project Compassion, Green Revolution, and Environmental Center of the Philippines).

It was a situation not unlike that in the corporate setting where production and marketing sections would often be at odds with those who handled administrative and finance services. While production and marketing would be about spending money, the latter was responsible for keeping tab of funds and making sure that each centavo could be accounted for and spent well to produce project outputs.

Each program in the integrated set-up that we had must produce a budget and these were analyzed at each start of the fiscal year. The department heads and team leaders would have to depend their submissions to a one-man committee, Mr. Ben Garcia. All the field teams were kept on a tight budget and they had to submit a report of expenses monthly before the next release would be given. It was Mr. Garcia who instituted the famous rule, "No Report; No Salary."

Fieldworkers and community organizers are normally not so good in keeping close watch of their expenses because of the nature of their job. They have to go to remote places where no receipts are given for purchases. In a rural setting, most especially if you are in the Philippines or Asia, you are expected to bring something to the head of the village or to the community if you are going there for a visit.

This meant setting aside money by the field teams and each member had to contribute to a kitty to take care of these cost items. Unfortunately, you could not charge such expenses officially; hence, you ended up most of the time arguing with Mr. Ben Garcia, who played the role of son-of-a-bitch guy to take care of scarce resources to support the requirements of the various teams spread out in a number of municipalities and barangays in several provinces. Of course, the field teams quite often ended up paying for such expenses. The admin and finance rules were not flexible enough to support field teams working in villages far from the poblacion.

Someetimes arguments became so heated up between the team leaders and Mr. Ben Garcia that there  would be ugly scenes of near fisticuffs between them to settle matters. RPB was often called to settle such differences. The admin and finance function is normally a staff position to support team leaders, who occupy line positions.

The temptation is strong in organizations for those who exercise this supposed staff function to lord it over everybody else because normally the admin and finance officer and the top honcho were the only ones exercising decisions about financial matters. Hence, there was a built-in mechanism for hostilities between the admin and finance function exercised by Mr. Garcia and the line managers, the team leaders.

I think this situation was designed by RPB himself who would not like Mr. Garcia to cultivate good relations between the Admin and Finance department and the field teams so as to create what he regarded as healthy adversarial relationship between the two which could result in more transparent accounting of funds.

On paper, it was good, but in practice it did not quite support field operations which was geared to the dynamic process of dealing with local communities and local governance units at a phase which could not be accurately determined as to the timing and kind of expenses for activities undertaken in remote villages. For instance, if you need to buy materials for your demonstration of crafts in training classes which a community could not provide, it would be impossible to produce quotes from at least three suppliers given the kind of task environment where a field team had to operate. In these places, you have to walk 20 to 30 kms in  rugged terrain to find an agent for a hardware store.

It was also hard to justify contributions made by the team to barangay fiestas, the wedding of volunteers, the baptism of a child especially if you were chosen by the parents to be the sponsors, and so on. This could easily run to something like one-third of one's measly salary.

When entries in daily logbooks and during assessment meetings got more strident and angrier each month, management had to act. The younger group from the Crazy Co. proposed the creation of an Operations Review Committee, which would summarize problems encountered each month not only about administrative matters but also other concerns, such as the constraints met in dealing with Mayors and other politicians, etc. The proposal was approved by RPB upon expression of support, from UNICEF which after all provided the bulk of funding and, hence, it had a stake in these discussions.

Of all the donors we dealt with, UNICEF had the most number of national staff which facilitated easier discussions using "back channel" methods that Filipinos are familiar with. The donor agency suggested that program officers assigned to our programs bring along the UNICEF admin and finance staff and observe first-hand what was happening.

In some of the project sites, UNICEF Representative Wah Wong went to visit project sites in some hilly barangays in Teresa, Rizal. At one point, the Deputy Resident Representative, Wilfred D'Silva, appointed himself as the interim UNICEF program officer responsible for our integrated program and would join us in field missions, sleep in our team house, accompany the team in coastal and upland villages and sometimes he would be the one to explain how immunization happens with the long journey it takes for the vaccines to reach the fridge at the home economics building of a school or a barangay clinic.

We guess only a veteran UNICEF fieldworker could make a heart-rending narrative of what could be a boring story on how vaccines could reach a barangay, across swollen rivers and forbidding mountain terrain, through a long "bridge of helping hands." Indeed this was the familiar teleserye UNICEF style!

To the credit of Mr. Garcia, who had been used to lord it all over the place in his zealousness to implement admin and finance rules, he was flexible enough to accept the changes made by the ORC and endorsed by UNICEF program officers.  It also helped that Mr. Garcia was also a Vietnam veteran along with most members of the old guys in the integrated program and so decorum was maintained in all the intense clash of opinions in full view of the donor.

In later years, Mr. Garcia would be eventually praised  by the Crazy Co. as instrumental in protecting savings from our fund drives, the interest of which we used for admin expenses. As for UNICEF Deputy Resident Representative, he was bestowed the highest award that the organization could give. He was awarded the Fieldworker of the Year Award - with the plaque paid for by contributions from each member of the Crazy Co. to the delight of Mr. Garcia.

Mr. Garcia, wherever you are, we survived those difficult years in late 70s and 80s with your vigilance over what you always would term as the "lifeblood of the organization," its finances. But, of course, fieldworkers, living or dead, would always rise up to say such lifeblood could not be divorced from the body that has to be nourished and sustained not only for its own sake but for a purpose higher than its own mortal existence.

And so the saga in this built-in conflict between those who spend the money and those who want to save it continues.

In the Company of ComDev Pioneers 777

MAYOR JOSE MA. ROCHA 

We met him at a difficult part of our life when we were trying to make sense of what could be done given the restrictions of the martial law regime and the burden of getting a normal life after being on the run for many years. Looking back, it was a great thing we knew him during the mid-70s and 80s as we struggled to redefine our place in the sun, so to speak, after so many storms had passed leaving us ashore in the company of those whose life and career had a trajectory markedly different from ours.

While Undoy Rocha, as he was called by friends and associates, and the other community development pioneers, spent their youth in the usual career path of finishing a college degree and being absorbed later into government service or some other kind of formal employment, our generation produced many examples of lives led in contrast to this path. It was a generation which had to carry the burden of the struggle against a repressive regime and took, as a consequence,  the uncertain path of protest and underground work which led for many of us to destinations not entirely matching our initial plans.

It was easy for some of us to just give up and continue to survive from day to day with bitterness, cynicism and despair as some did distorting their perception of events and of their lives as a result. Knowing Mayor Rocha at this point of our life helped save us from falling into this emotional abyss which could be considered a fate worst than death.

He typified the kind of political leader who could be trusted by Filipinos of all ages. We saw him at work and in his home, first near the church in Tagbilaran City, and then later in Mansasa. Both home and office at various times of the day or night provided opportunities for us to see, hear and experience a true leader of the people. He gave everyone who came to him, despite varying economic stations and social positions, the same investment of time and efforts.

Those who flocked to greet him on his birthday constituted in themselves the microcosm of society which held him in high esteem for his sense of fairness in dealing with those who sought favor from him and his unwavering commitment to public service often beyond the call of duty.

Being close to the young Father of Community Development, Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, since the trying and pioneering years of the country's community development program under Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, he quickly understood the mission of the "Ilaw ng Buhay" group to find more effective ways to deliver services to the people, most especially beyond the boundaries of the town center or poblacion.

When the backyard gardening program or Green Revolution sought support for funding, Mayor Rocha galvanized support to raise funds through a Php 1 donation drive. He was the first Mayor to demonstrate how child-based data could mobilize community support for his nutrition campaign.

Mayor Rocha and his wife, Lily, were there in all the supplementary feeding activities and launching of Mothers' Classes to emphasize the point that the solution to child malnutrition was right there at the backyard where perennial vegetables could be grown without the use of chemicals. He led the drive to discourage the buying of junk food in school campuses. His leadership made it possible for the city to carry out regular weighing of preschool children and the data used as basis for interventions by the health department and the private sector.

His administration gave due recognition to trained Unit Leaders for 20-family clusters who extended the outreach of services and information to households not normally reached by government agencies. Both UNICEF and the national government acknowledged the success of the community-based nutrition program in the city. The city was recipient of several awards on account of its consistent reduction of child malnutrition cases in each barangay.

Probably a proof of the popularity of  child-based programs under Mayor Rocha's administration was the launching of the International Year of the Child in 1979. The UNICEF staff who were present noted that it was the first time they attended an activity in which there were more people in the parade than those watching from the sidewalk. It was those who were in the parade who were clapping their hands to acknowledge greetings and wild cheers from onlookers looking down from windows and the few who were on the street. 

He and his wife led local development trainers in conducting Family Ilaw Training called FIT for the cluster of 20-family units which constituted the Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) chapters. He supported Ilaw's "supermarket" approach to family planning which makes available all information about family planning devices, including their advantages and disadvantages, and appeals to the husband and wife to decide jointly which method to use based on their own conscience and technical assessment of each choice.

The approach emphasizes it is the moral duty of parents to bring forth to the world the number of children they can feed, clothe, shelter and educate. After their presentation to the Bishop and the clergy in conservative Tagbilaran City, the approach was officially endorsed by the church for Tagbilaran City and Bohol and the priests and nuns were allowed to be part of the training team. It was clearly through the leadership of Mayor Rocha that this became possible.

Mayor Rocha supported the move to establish the Ilaw International Center in Bool, Tagbilaran City to serve as resource institution for the replication of the "Ilaw ng Buhay (Life of Life)" approach to development. His support to this UNICEF-assisted initiative consisted of the following:

• negotiation with landowners for the purchase of the lots for the Center; 
• advocacy with his friends in the business sector to assist the Ilaw staff get bargain prices for construction materials as well as to provide advice on the construction; 
• liaison work with the Provincial Government for support during the pre-construction, construction and post-construction phases on matters related to legal requirements and other support; 
• validating the resumes and background of most applicants applying to be in the program support staff of the Center.

His support went beyond contributions to the building of the physical infrasture for the Center. He drew from his vast experience in the bureaucracy (Special Assistant to Pres. Carlos P. Garcia, a Boholano) and the political sector for he himself became involved in the politics of Bohol's only city, Tagbilaran, in making sure that the IIC curriculum would not end up as textbook learning, but rather as providing a practical guide to forge the close collaboration between target communities and local government in common efforts to reach the poorest of the poor with much-needed services and useful information.

Among the rare breed of development-oriented Mayors in the province and the country, he became an instant hit in the role of what development workers call as "legitimizer," one who validates concepts, principles and theoretical frameworks with one's own analysis and insights derived from practical experiences and personal reflections.

He was designated as chair of a Board of Trustees for a foundation that would run the Center, as it was originally planned, but it did not materialize for reasons only RPB knew. When he learned about this seeming unexpected development towards the end of the ten-year existence of IIC, he leaned back in his chair as he faced the lawyer hired by Atty. Binamira and said gently, "Let us not have anything to do with how RPB will dispose the property. We have done our part in good faith."

RPB ended up selling the property to a realtor who owns a hotel, but the sale is reportedly contested by his heirs, who were all disowned in his will before he died.

True to his word, Mayor Rocha did not contest the sale on behalf of all of us in the organization who raised the funds for the land and the building as counterpart to the assistance provided by UNICEF to enable our old and young staff to carry on with the mission to bring the light of life to those who are most in need.

Mayor Rocha became the Chair of a new group, the Bohol Local Development Foundation, composed of survivors from the old IIC. He died early this year mourned by hundreds of people from all walks of life in contrast to the death of the Father of Community Development who passed away unmourned by even his own immediate family.

Remembering Fieldworkers 222

SIMEON LEAL 

Sims, as he was called by friends, worked with us at the Ilaw International Center (IIC) in Bohol for around three years in the 80s as head of the Appropriate Technology Unit. Prior to this assignment, he was a member of the Project Compassion team in Iloilo for six years. In 1987, he worked for a UNDP project in the Maldives, teaching locals how to do handicraft for the growing tourism industry in that country.

We did not meet when he came back in 1988 because he chose to be in Iloilo to work in a project with the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO). He distinguished himself in his work that he was appointed as head of the planning office after a few years.

Meanwhile, in line with my work with UNDP after I left IIC in 1989, I had the chance to visit Maldives in the 90s and met local people who knew him before. They spoke glowingly about him, his patience in teaching them how to make baskets, wooden carvings, fans, place mats and shell craft pieces.

He brought to the creation of these handicraft pieces the precision of an engineer, his profession, and the patience of a trainer, two qualities which do not mix usually in one persona. His training participants in Maldives, Bohol and Iloilo all would recall Sims' patience with those who were slow learners or those who got distracted while at work.

At IIC, nobody in the faculty was good at handicraft makeing except Sims. He was actually forced into it by the boss, Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, who was looking for an assistant to execute what he was thinking of. Sims was recalled from his work in Iloilo and was assigned to set up the Appropriate Technology Unit.

He worked directly with RPB which meant being able to be a good soldier all the time, executing orders which came in the form of loud commands most of the time. Truly, only a person with the patience of a mule could have lasted a year with a boss as demanding as RPB.

Sims survived the ordeal and was proud they produced several baskets of exquisite quality from native materials such as coconut midribs, rattan and other local materials. All of them ended up being photographed, captioned and stored in a secluded room at IIC.

RPB was so protective of their artistic creations that he would not allow Sims to show them to our visitors for fear they would be copied. We suggested that the crafts be displayed in various tourism outlets but he rejected the suggestion. But one time there was a foreign guest  who finally convinced RPB to give him samples so he could show them to potential buyers abroad. RPB believed his claim he could place big orders for the handicraft items.

After months of not hearing from the guest, RPB decided to close the Appro Tech Unit and that was why Engr. Sims Leal ended up in Maldives teaching locals how to weave baskets and make shell necklaces the Filipino way.

Something like six years ago, when I went to Iloilo City on a field mission for a project, I met some people from the provincial planning office and inquired about Sims. They told me he was no longer head of the office but was assigned instead to the motor pool. Sims did not sign a payment voucher that a politician would like him to sign. Hence, he was demoted.

Before I left Iloilo I tried to see him but I was told he just had a nervous breakdown. Less than a year after this visit to Iloilo, I heard our dear old Sims had passed away.

Sims, with his integrity intact, was truly a development worker to the end. Rest in peace, amigo!

Remembering Fieldworkers 111

 ROGELIO ALEGADO 

Roger was a high school teacher when he was recruited as development trainer for the "Ilaw ng Buhay" program in Digos, Davao del Sur in the late 70s. He brought a fresh approach to Family Ilaw Training by singing songs relevant to the inputs for the night.

Prior to each input on family planning, environmental management or any topic assigned to him, he would always entertain the audience with his jokes and stories. His many versions of Matudnila  became top hits in all the barangays where he was assigned.

When the training modules for Family Ilaw Training were being pilot-tested in Luzon, he was one of those from Mindanao who was recruited to be part of the national team. He became an instant hit in the barangays. When we organized the staff for the Ilaw International Center in Bohol, he was part of the original team. He resigned his teaching post to be part of the Crazy Company.

Roger and his guitar actually gave a new persona for the fieldworker - as entertainer in addition to being a trainer. He represented a new breed of fieldworkers, those good in singing and playing the guitar in contrast to earlier days when PACD barrio workers were known to bring blackboards and chalks and visual aids to get their message across. With Roger's popularity in Ilaw ng Buhay barangays, the fieldworker must also bring a guitar and sing before villagers would listen.

Of all the fieldworkers and trainers in those days, Roger logged the most number of hours in barangays considered risky by the military. With his songs and guitar, he went to areas considered strongly influenced by armed insurgents and delivered his message about nutrition and family planning and encouraged everybody to sing with him. He had the distinction of logging the most number of training hours in the remote barangays of Quezon, Catanduanes, Leyte and Davao del Sur.

Roger served as resident director of the Ilaw International Center during its final three years, from late 1989 to 1993.

For a brief period after IIC closed, he served as agent for a funeral parlor in Tagbilaran City to keep body and soul together and to support his family. Atty. Juanito Cambangay, head of the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO) took him from this job from where, as the joke goes, he could not sing and play his guitar to corpses. At the planning office, he was able to transform himself as a planner and contributed insights to the creation of a tool for ranking households based on core poverty indicators.

In fact, the need for a software was identified when he manually did the calculations to rank municipalities based on four indicators (child malnutrition, drop-outs, income and unemployment).  It took him quite some time to finish it. He became part of the think tank which provided inputs to Tony Irving for the first version of the Poverty Datbase Monitory System (PDMS) software known at that time as LPRAP (Local Poverty Reduction Action Plan).

While at PPDO, he was assigned usually to conduct workshops and seminars where he again displayed his talent as entertainer. Several weeks after his death, when our DReAMS' project team went to Balilihan, the participants mentioned his name several times and proposed a prayer for him. A tribute any fieldworker would be happy about.

During his necrological services, he might have been pleased to know that his training buddy, Dodong Formentara, was there to bid him farewell. Dodong  had just retired from the community work he loved to do with Roger in so many villages, winning hearts and minds for the cause of child welfare despite political conflicts.

Tony Irving was there, too, part of the crowd which grieved with the family of Roger. A senior member from one of his field teams, a trustee of Bohol Local Development Foundation, former Guindulman Vice Mayor Eleno Laga, delivered an eulogy on our behalf.

Roger, we all love and remember you because, as we always would quote in the old days, "you love the people who are the real heroes."

Tribute to Fieldworkers, Alive or Dead

Some of my friends found time yesterday to send me SMS requesting if I could also talk about not only the top people in the projects we worked with in 1970s and 1980s but also the fieldworkers we have known whether or not they had kicked the bucket.

I told them that's the part of the plan for this current series on the blog. I have been talking about personalities I knew since 1975 when I came to work as information officer for the three programs, Project Compassion, Green Revolution and Environmental Center of the Philippines, until 1982 when the Ilaw International Center (IIC) started to be built in Tagbilaran City in preparation for the replication of the field-tested integrated approach to priority provinces identified through the UNICEF-Government of the Philippines Country Program for Children.

The second part will be from 1983 to 1989 when the IIC became fully operational as a resource center.  It promoted what was called at that time as Appropriate Community Development (ACD), perhaps influenced by the term Appropriate Technology, to show adaptation to local culture and building on what communities have been doing in response to issues such as poverty and environmental concerns. ACD was being positioned at that time against the prevailing trend of change agents and projects introducing something new without first understanding what has been done and what is being done on a specific problem in the community.

I left IIC in 1989 so I could not write on first-hand knowledge about the period from 1990 to 1993, the year IIC closed down.

Now it can be asked, as some of my friends did when I resumed blogging sometime ago, why do I have to do this tedious and sometimes painful exercise of trying to remember the past beginning from that period when I tried to reconstruct my personal life to assume more or less a normal life?

First, I feel the need to answer once and for all the query from friends and relatives who helped me survive the difficult period from 1971 to 1974, when I was cut off from from family and work to elude arrests on account of my involvement in protests agains martial law;

Second, this is a way of reassuring them that their assistance was not in vain for it helped me pursue a life's mission in a way different from the previous path I had taken and I  have been convinced there are many ways to help build a country with focus on those who need the most help;

Third, I need a more organized way to look back at my particular development journey to have a more appreciative look at personalities and events to be able to somehow articulate reforms in doing development work at local level, in the company of local government units, NGOs and people's organizations and local communities;

Fourth, I need to reassure the people I worked with in various countries that I, at age 70, am still fully committed to discover effective ways of local governance and community mobilization so we can truly move forward to a better life for all, taking into account that we need to bring to the mainstream all those who have been consigned to the periphery on account of their unequal access to resources and opportunities due to social processes outside their influence and control;

Fifth, I need to counter prevailing cynicism, indifference and despair among the young, distracted as they are by enticements to pursue selfish goals, and somehow try to assure them that they are truly part of the future and that they have to create that future now with a sustained involvement in causes that will make humanity advance to a future worthy enough for them to invest a lifetime of struggle and triumph against forces that weaken the resolve to help create a better world.

Having said all these, I will now proceed to tell you what I appreciate in the various characters I have worked with in this somewhat difficult and challenging journey to do what in the literature is called prosaically as people-based development.

More on the next blog.

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Reflections on the Old PACD

They are all dead now, the six (Ramon P. Binamira, Alberto Ramos, Pio Almodiel, Alfredo Dimaano, Damaso Dimaano, Benito Benitez) who were some of the pillars of the old Presidential Assistant for Community Development (PACD) in the 50s. They ere among those who led efforts to do something innovative about the purely service delivery approach which characterized community development work since its launching.

During the 70s and 80s, community empowerment approaches emerged which promoted the no-linkage-with-government policy. Several NGOs and some Church-based groups were thrust into national prominence in their advocacy of these approaches which distinguished themselves from the traditional extension agent approach of the Government.

From a pioneering effort, PACD became part of the bureaucracy with its elaborate structure that extends from the national, regional, provincial to the village level. With successive national elections and changes in the political structure, PACD could not fend off political influences and its sheer size became a problem in ensuring quality performance of the barrio workers who linked up national agencies to the people. RPB was replaced with politicians and, as expected, the barrio workers were perceived more as working for their interests. The acronym PACD became translated into Pag-Abot Caon Dayon (When they arrive, they eat right away!).

The Department of Local Government and Community Development or DLGCD took its place or it was actually the old structure given a new name. Community development was simplified as the organization of cooperatives, which were still an alien and quite sophisticated as far as the village people were concerned. Meanwhile the bad image of the department persisted. The acronym DLGCD came to be known as Department of Local Girls and Contraceptive Devices under the martial law regime. Perhaps this was due to the alleged or rumored practice of arranging dates with "chicks" for visiting officials and politicians. True or not, such rumor indicated that the perceived negative image was not addressed during those years.

In the course of time, community development was dropped from the name of the department. It became officially known as DILG or Department of Interior and Local Government.

DILG has gone through major reforms. Those under the administration of the late Sec. Jesse Robredo were designed to professionalize local governance with its emphasis on performance score cards, cash awards and recognition for LGUs which perform well in cutting bureaucratic red tape, and so on.

Perhaps it is not in the mandate of DILG to worry about the systematic participation of local communities to ensure that the benefits of good governance result in improving the situation of the poorest of the poor or the most disadvantaged and marginalized among the communities that LGUs deal with from day to day.

This is an area where LGUs can partner with civil society organizations and NGOs, as well as the private sector, to ensure that service delivery to poor households will be politics-free.

In the Company of ComDev Pioneers – 666

RAMON P. BINAMIRA

RPB was how he was called by everyone, mostly by those who worked with him in the old PACD which he headed for almost a decade since the mid 1950s, when the office was founded to bring government services available to the people in the periphery.  Several books were written about him who is widely known in textbooks as “Father of Community Development” in the Philippines.

He loomed large in the consciousness of those who were with him in the early years of PACD. In their 20s, the young graduates seemed to be under the spell of RPB. To them, RPB was the sole arbiter of what was right or wrong in the program. A persuasive speaker, he could sway arguments to his side in discussion with the staff and tangling with other bureaucrats in the Government.

With a volatile temperament, he would often pick quarrels with other personalities in government. He carried the same wild swings of temper when he was assigned by Mrs. Imelda Marcos to head three of her social development programs in the 70s. RPB lorded it over these programs without much  intervention from Mrs. Marcos because he was handed these programs with limited funding and he had to raise funds on his own.

RPB used the scarce funds given to him and to some extent, the name of Mrs. Marcos, to engage in fund campaigns, which included the following:

• a Php 1 donation drive conducted nation-wide with tickets raffled off weekly for prizes on national TV, in Nora Aunor’s Superstar show;
• a national fund campaign for the Green Revolution which featured solicitation of funds from government agencies and the private sector with volunteers led by the noted columnist, Teodoro Valencia of the Manila Times and RR Public Relations, Inc. as campaign director;
• a boxing match, the Salavarria-Lopez bout, held at the Araneta Coliseum with the proceeds going to the programs;
• the production of a commercial movie, Sapin-Sapin Patong-Patong, starring the country’s heart-throbs at the time, Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz III;
• the holding of the Baguio Summer Festival for the benefit of the Green Revolution; and
• the holding of cockfight derby in several provinces.

His flexibility to listen to the need for innovations in the design of the programs being integrated under his management was to a large extent conditioned by the need to raise much-needed funds. The program reforms and innovations earned funding support from donors such as UNICEF and USAID. Donor support enabled the three programs to acquire assets such as vehicles, including Land Cruisers, Toyota Coasters, more Sakbayan utility vehicles and other cars, motorcycles, and a big motorboat.  In addition to the vehicles, the donors provided state-of-the-art training and communication equipment.

Aside from steering the programs towards assuming features consistent with the advocacies and strategies of donors, RPB could be credited to reading early signs on the possible overthrow of the Marcos regime. He initiated moves even prior to the 1986 EDSA Revolution of surreptitiously breaking away from the umbrella organization of the First Lady, Mrs. Imelda Marcos.

With savings from the fund campaigns, he bought land in Lucena City in Quezon and Tagbilaran City in Bohol to prepare for the eventual transfer of the property of the programs to secure them prior to the takeover of a new administration potentially hostile to the programs.

RPB took initial steps to fully integrate the three programs under the overall “Ilaw ng Buhay” program and to build a resource institution, the Ilaw International Center (IIC), in Bohol to provide the much-needed institutional framework for an initiative totally outside the authority of the Marcos regime and the First Lady.  

The establishment of the IIC  marked another important stage in the quest for more effective approaches to community development which RPB and the Crazy Co. embarked on in efforts to replicate improved methodologies and approaches, as well as to ensure external donor assistance and to  cope with perceived threats  from the rapidly-changing political environment in the mid-80s.

More on the next blog