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