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.
.
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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