What eventually came to be known as the Crazy Company evolved from the years 1978 to 1981, quite a busy period for field testing the new "Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life)" approach to community development in several pilot cities and municipalities: Lucena City in Quezon Province; Legazpi City in Albay; Oroquieta City In Misamis Occidental; Lapu-lapu City in Cebu, Tagbilaran City in Bohol; and in several municipalities (Naguilian, La Union; Teresa and Pililla in Rizal; Candelaria, Quezon; Basud and Daet, Camarines Norte; Sto. Domingo, Albay; Digos and Hagonoy in Davao del Sur).
The 45-member group of community development workers were divided into small teams to cover each pilot municipality. Each team, comprising of around 5 members, was assigned a team leader. The team must live in the area of coverage, in a designated team house. Each team member was provided a UNICEF-donated Sakbayan, a local clone of the Volkswagen, and a copy of the Ilaw ng Buhay Operations Guide to serve as their "bible", according to the head, Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, known as the country's Father of Community Development.
The senior members of the former PACD group served as deputies and department directors (Pio Almodiel for Project Compassion; Beinvenido Garcia for Green Revolution; Damaso Dimaano for Environmental Center of the Philippines; and Alberto Ramos as overall program director; Enrique Tolentino, training director). In addition to their line functions in the structure, each was assigned specific cluster of pilot areas to look after and monitor.
Probably because I was doing liaison work with international donor agencies (UNICEF, USAID), I was assigned to head the Planning, Monitoring, Research and Communication Division. I was 31 working with community development professionals almost twice my age with international experience as community development advisers in war-torn Vietnam and in Laos where Operations Brotherhood was located. I was easily the youngest in the group until we recruited Bimboy Penaranda, around 7 years my junior, who used to work with the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, and did journalism work on the side.
Bimboy and I recruited our staff from the UP Los Banos interns who had spent their internship in Ilaw ng Buhay areas as requirement in their human ecology degree. Some of the people who worked with us for almost two years as researchers were: Doracie Zoleta, Lilibeth Vargas, Irene Reyes and Noemi (?) Pandi. For some reasons, I could not recall the names of their male classmates. All of them were two or three years younger than Bimboy.
As for the field teams, they recruited new members from the ranks of local development trainers they had trained and worked with before in Project Compassion projects prior to the formulation of the "Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life Movement)." That was how each team drew fresh blood from other sectors who did not come through the PACD curriculum.
Later I was designated as Special Assistant to the President on Planning and Operations and concurrently Chief of the Operations Review Committee (ORC) to further ensure regular tracking of each team's performance in carrying out the community-based and integrated program on backyard gardening, environmental management, and family planning with particular focus on child welfare.
Each team member was required to keep a daily log of his or her activities, as well as reflections, to be submitted with the regular monthly reports first to the ORC and then to the deputies. The ORC members, who were to travel to the field once or twice a quarter, had to supplement their reports with observations or analysis from the daily logs submitted by team members.
All the teams would meet only twice a year for assessment of field experiences and replanning. Atty. Binamira and the deputies made sure that the office at the Green Revolution Command Center at Nayong Pilipino would have only the basic necessities on top of it being crowded to discourage field teams to stay longer than the one week required for each meeting.
At our division and ORC level, we who were younger than the pioneers of community development, were afforded a ringside view, as it were, of how these veterans in community work used their skills and commitment to try something new in their profession in pursuit of the old mission to reach target households and communities with much-needed services from the center to the periphery.
All of us in this group were thankful we were given the privilege to see the country's veteran community development workers at their finest, mentoring young conterparts and volunteers, in the quest for the Holy Grail of doing meaningful work among the poor and the not-so-poor in cooperation with local government functionaries, who were normally avoided by NGOs during the martial law regime.
More on this in the next blog.
The 45-member group of community development workers were divided into small teams to cover each pilot municipality. Each team, comprising of around 5 members, was assigned a team leader. The team must live in the area of coverage, in a designated team house. Each team member was provided a UNICEF-donated Sakbayan, a local clone of the Volkswagen, and a copy of the Ilaw ng Buhay Operations Guide to serve as their "bible", according to the head, Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, known as the country's Father of Community Development.
The senior members of the former PACD group served as deputies and department directors (Pio Almodiel for Project Compassion; Beinvenido Garcia for Green Revolution; Damaso Dimaano for Environmental Center of the Philippines; and Alberto Ramos as overall program director; Enrique Tolentino, training director). In addition to their line functions in the structure, each was assigned specific cluster of pilot areas to look after and monitor.
Probably because I was doing liaison work with international donor agencies (UNICEF, USAID), I was assigned to head the Planning, Monitoring, Research and Communication Division. I was 31 working with community development professionals almost twice my age with international experience as community development advisers in war-torn Vietnam and in Laos where Operations Brotherhood was located. I was easily the youngest in the group until we recruited Bimboy Penaranda, around 7 years my junior, who used to work with the Nutrition Center of the Philippines, and did journalism work on the side.
Bimboy and I recruited our staff from the UP Los Banos interns who had spent their internship in Ilaw ng Buhay areas as requirement in their human ecology degree. Some of the people who worked with us for almost two years as researchers were: Doracie Zoleta, Lilibeth Vargas, Irene Reyes and Noemi (?) Pandi. For some reasons, I could not recall the names of their male classmates. All of them were two or three years younger than Bimboy.
As for the field teams, they recruited new members from the ranks of local development trainers they had trained and worked with before in Project Compassion projects prior to the formulation of the "Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life Movement)." That was how each team drew fresh blood from other sectors who did not come through the PACD curriculum.
Later I was designated as Special Assistant to the President on Planning and Operations and concurrently Chief of the Operations Review Committee (ORC) to further ensure regular tracking of each team's performance in carrying out the community-based and integrated program on backyard gardening, environmental management, and family planning with particular focus on child welfare.
Each team member was required to keep a daily log of his or her activities, as well as reflections, to be submitted with the regular monthly reports first to the ORC and then to the deputies. The ORC members, who were to travel to the field once or twice a quarter, had to supplement their reports with observations or analysis from the daily logs submitted by team members.
All the teams would meet only twice a year for assessment of field experiences and replanning. Atty. Binamira and the deputies made sure that the office at the Green Revolution Command Center at Nayong Pilipino would have only the basic necessities on top of it being crowded to discourage field teams to stay longer than the one week required for each meeting.
At our division and ORC level, we who were younger than the pioneers of community development, were afforded a ringside view, as it were, of how these veterans in community work used their skills and commitment to try something new in their profession in pursuit of the old mission to reach target households and communities with much-needed services from the center to the periphery.
All of us in this group were thankful we were given the privilege to see the country's veteran community development workers at their finest, mentoring young conterparts and volunteers, in the quest for the Holy Grail of doing meaningful work among the poor and the not-so-poor in cooperation with local government functionaries, who were normally avoided by NGOs during the martial law regime.
More on this in the next blog.
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