Remembering Our Old NGO

Our group of community development workers used to run three quasi-government organizations identified with the then First Lady, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos, during the 70s.  These were Project Compassion, Green Revolution and the Environmental Center of the Philippines all headed by Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, a former Petron Vice President recruited by Mrs. Marcos to serve in her inner circle of project managers. 

You can say that our group was an NGO because we operated independently of Government, while running programs to complement those done by agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, Department of Environment and Natural Resources and a cluster of agencies which came to be known later as the Ministry of Human Settlements. The group, however, was not organized as a legal NGO, a practice which became common in the 90s as requirement,  so NGOs could enter into contractual arrangements with Government and other entities or take out loans from the bank or any microfinance facility. 

RPB, as Atty. Binamira was called by his staff and close associates, had a name school children memorized, being known in textbooks as the Father of Community Development. At the age of 27, he was appointed by then Pres. Ramon Magsaysay in the 50s to head the Presidential Assistant on Community Development known by its popular acronym as PACD. 

For projects assigned to him by Mrs. Marcos, RPB would recruit from these PACD pioneers who numbered around 20 , by this time all retirees fresh from their stint as community development advisors in Vietnam , Laos and other Southeast Asian countries.  I belonged to relatively younger staff who joined the group at a later time. We were not professional CD workers, but from other disciplines to complement their work in communities and with local governments. 

In the early 80s, there were young graduates from UP Los Banos who joined the regular staff after their internship with the three projects. Collectively, the whole group came to be known as “The Crazy Company” on account of its audacity to try new ideas to challenge old assumptions about how to work with local communities. 

This motley group composed of grizzled veterans of the PACD years, winning hearts and minds against creeping insurgencies, and young upstarts intent on trying new ways to reach the people more with empowering messages than basic services combined their skills and insights to produce what would be known in local development literature as the Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Movement. 

The Ilaw ng Buhay Movement was able to contribute innovations and fresh approaches to community work  before it was finally extinguished by deviation from its mission and the lack of militancy against such deviation from those who composed the “The Crazy Company.” 

More on this in the next blog.