You can picture the situation: the father of the country's community development program, known for his temper and authoritarian style of management, leading a motley group of development workers who represented contrasting views on how to do local development during the martial law period in the 70s and 80s in the Philippines.
This group of community development workers running the country's key social development programs (Project Compassion, Green Revolution, Environmental Center of the Philippines), starting from mid-70s to the 80s. represented the main strands of thinking and approaches which influenced development planning and project implementation by Government and NGOs during the period.
These strands are as follows:
As expected, there was the simmering conflict among the three groups in The Crazy Company apparent in discussions about the usual vision, mission, goal; approaches to community work; how to go about community organizing taking into account existing regulations against people's assembly; how to do community diagnosis and encourage people to articulate their problems without putting the regime in a bad light; how to generate broad-based collaboration of various sectors, including the militant left, to achieve community participation in all stages of the development process; and how to ensure that the people's goodwill on account of possible effective service delivery will not be used to make permanent the martial law regime and the entrenchment of the interests of the elite classes in plans and programs designed for the welfare of the people, especially those considered poor.
What held the group together despite their diverse views and approaches to development was their determination to reach the people with services during these hard times, and a shared conviction that martial law could lead to further marginalize the poor and entrench the vested interests of the the elite classes in Philippine society.
With this common ground defined, the group proposed to Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, the President and Executive Director of the umbrella program, Project Compassion, the holding of a "summit" to settle all issues that seemed to divide the group prior to the preparation of a work plan for all three national programs. Upon approval of the proposal, the group decided to undertake the following:
Instead of three days, the summit lasted for three months. It involved not only discussions during meetings and workshops, but also going out to selected barangays in Candelaria, Quezon to test community organizing approaches, training modules and social preparation techniques in efforts to settle once and for all the differences among the three groups which composed the legendary Crazy Company!
More on this in the next blog.
This group of community development workers running the country's key social development programs (Project Compassion, Green Revolution, Environmental Center of the Philippines), starting from mid-70s to the 80s. represented the main strands of thinking and approaches which influenced development planning and project implementation by Government and NGOs during the period.
These strands are as follows:
- the traditional service delivery approach to bring services and commodities from the central government to the towns and its barangays or villages in efforts to make development relevant to majority of the people;
- the intense advocacy for people's empowerment using service delivery merely as entry point to building local capacity for decision-making; and
- the academic discipline or bias to put technical basis in processes, products and services being peddled to the people by various groups from all sides of the political spectrum .
As expected, there was the simmering conflict among the three groups in The Crazy Company apparent in discussions about the usual vision, mission, goal; approaches to community work; how to go about community organizing taking into account existing regulations against people's assembly; how to do community diagnosis and encourage people to articulate their problems without putting the regime in a bad light; how to generate broad-based collaboration of various sectors, including the militant left, to achieve community participation in all stages of the development process; and how to ensure that the people's goodwill on account of possible effective service delivery will not be used to make permanent the martial law regime and the entrenchment of the interests of the elite classes in plans and programs designed for the welfare of the people, especially those considered poor.
What held the group together despite their diverse views and approaches to development was their determination to reach the people with services during these hard times, and a shared conviction that martial law could lead to further marginalize the poor and entrench the vested interests of the the elite classes in Philippine society.
With this common ground defined, the group proposed to Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, the President and Executive Director of the umbrella program, Project Compassion, the holding of a "summit" to settle all issues that seemed to divide the group prior to the preparation of a work plan for all three national programs. Upon approval of the proposal, the group decided to undertake the following:
- the PACD group to review application of their approach not only in the Philippines but also in several Asian countries and come up with lessons learned from government-run community development programs;
- the people's empowerment group to document lessons from the experiences of NGOs and their initiatives to strengthen local decision-making; and
- the academic group to research on community-based approaches adopted by various groups, including the academic institutions, in projects funded by external donors and the national government.
Instead of three days, the summit lasted for three months. It involved not only discussions during meetings and workshops, but also going out to selected barangays in Candelaria, Quezon to test community organizing approaches, training modules and social preparation techniques in efforts to settle once and for all the differences among the three groups which composed the legendary Crazy Company!
More on this in the next blog.
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