The Impact of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda on Bohol Quake Assistance (BQA)

The impact of super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was not as severe in Bohol as in the provinces of Leyte and Samar, but nonetheless it has affected the operations of the Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF), the NGO which has been supporting the victims of last month’s earthquake: 

 

·    Four municipalities (Inabanga, Getafe, Talibon and Bien Unido) in Northern Bohol were severely 

    damaged. There are now more homeless people in these areas because of Typhoon Haiyan.

 

·    From a target of 150 houses in a six-month period, we have to double or even triple our         

   target to be able to cope with families who have their houses destroyed by the super typhoon.

 

·  The super typhoon destroyed completely the geothermal power source in Leyte which is the 

  same source for Bohol. It will take months before the Leyte facility will be fully operational. 

  Meanwhile, water and power supply is adversely affected in Bohol which will impact negatively 

  on existing plans for rehabilitation. 

 

·  The super typhoon caused massive landslides in Antequera and Cortes which will affect the 

  time frame for implementing existing plan to move families from tents and other makeshift 

  structure.

 

·  The landslides further reduce the possibility of moving families to their former location. We 

  need to spend time and look for resources to be able to procure land suitable for relocating 

  families in safer location. 

 

Nestor M Pestelos

BLDF President

Letter of Appeal for Bohol

07 November 2013

To Our Dear Friends,

As you are aware, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck our country’s Region VII on

15 October 2013, causing serious damage mostly in Bohol. Over 200 people died, more than 1,000 got injured and majority of the 1.26 million population were severely affected by the

natural catastrophe.

You must have seen media images showing how in a matter of seconds, a total of 22 centuries-old churches were damaged, some reduced to rubbles;  hundreds of buildings and homes destroyed;  roads and bridges blocked or collapsed; power lines cut and water supplies interrupted.

Some of the world-famous Chocolate Hills were defaced. The damage to the local economy and to the people’s sense of security and well-being was incalculable.  A total of 2,737 aftershocks have been recorded to date. More than 100 sinkholes were discovered. A state of calamity has been declared for the province.

Around 380,000 people have been displaced with over 75,000 living in makeshift shelters outside their homes and in open public places or evacuation centers. A total of 56,993 houses were damaged, 12, 503 or 22% of which were totally destroyed.

Our NGO, the Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF), has joined hands with Habitat for Humanity Philippines, Miriam College and Peacock Garden Spa and Resort in Baclayon, Bohol to help the Government and the international committee address the challenge to provide temporary houses and enable families to move from tents and other makeshift evacuation sites. Based on current estimates, each temporary house will cost Php 10,000 (USD 230) with contribution of labor and some construction materials from the family being helped.

The target of this partnership is to help families with totally damaged houses by building 150 houses from the initial period, October 2013 to April 2014. Administrative costs, estimated at 15% of the house costs (Php 1.5 m.) will amount to Php 225,000. Hence, the total funding required is Php 1,725, 000, the target for the funding campaign.  

We will increase the house build targets as we raise more funds.

 We appeal to you to help us raise this amount by sending your contribution to:  United Coconut Planters Bank, Tagbilaran City, Philippines with BLDF UCPB Peso Acct # 003051275898; UCPB SWIFT CODE – UCPBPHMMA .

Alternatively, your cash donation can be sent to: Western Union c/o Ms. Bona Dea Padron  Address: La Paz, Cortes, Bohol; Tel. +63 38 503 9440; Mobile: +63 908 860 1018; Palawan Pawnshop, Cebuana Lhullier, M. Lhullier c/o Lorena Balala, Laya, Baclayon, Bohol; Tel. +63 (935) 3635241.

Contributions will be acknowledged on the FB page, Bohol Quake Assistance. Financial and program updates are also published on this FB page. My FB name is npestelos. Information about BLDF is found in these websites: www.nestormpestelos.blogspot.com and www.pdmsplus.com.

Any amount will do. The important thing is for us to show we care for Bohol and its gentle people who are now living through difficult times. 

Yours sincerely,

NESTOR M. PESTELOS

BLDF President

Happiness Project

Last 31 August, I bought a book from the local NBS entitled The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Due to the usual crowded days and equally crowded nights, I have read only a few pages, 46 to be exact. From this number of pages, I read some startling things that set me into thinking whether it would be great to devote a year to pursue things that would make me happy - or, to bae precise, to be more happy since in most times, I am happy.

The blurb on the back cover says: "She found that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that outer order contributes to inner calm; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest differences."

This, plus the 70% reduction from the usual price, got me into buying the book.

After 40 pages, what can I say about the book? I think it's worth reading until the end. She writes in a very lucid and simple style. I was also drawn to the promise that I could learn some lessons to get me out of this rather awkward situation I have found myself in, something difficult to describe to my wife and other close relations, this feeling of being lost amidst all this frenzy around me.

During the past three months or so, I keep worrying about the pain on my left knee, but I have not taken the time and trouble to see a doctor. I would rather suffer than work out the less painful job of adjusting my schedule and see the doctor. I have resorted to taking painkillers to ease the pain, rather than to go to the doctor and get a proper diagnosis and, hopefully, a solution to what ails me.

This wavering attitude about going to the doctor is making me unhappy but I do not do anything about it. To be fair to myself, I have really been so busy with a lot of things. I have been to several provinces on a consultancy assignment and the frantic schedule to meet deadlines somehow distract my attention from the pain. This is crazy thought and I am not being reasonable or, if you please, logical about it all.

I must follow Ms. Rubin's example of writing down a plan for my own Happiness Project. Perhaps I should start listing what make me unhappy. Or, like her, I should have some resolutions as I plod through the routine of each day hoping to be happy with each resolution carried out.

It's quite a task clarifying what I really want to do in this Happiness Project.

Perhaps the first thing to do is to get a good night's sleep, good for the mandatory eight hours, and clear my brain of cobwebs that prevent me from seeing the true path to happiness.

It's 2.35 a.m., quite from 9.00 p.m., which is my sleeping time.

Now to bed and worry about the H Project later. Must resume reading the book one of these days and resolve to finish reading it.

Now I must force myself to sleep.

Project Ideas

During the past three weeks or so, I have been in the company of friends trying to find new project ideas which we can reflect on and if we have the time, probably convert into full-blown project documents or proposals for submission to government or external donors.

Some of these ideas are as follows:

• Establishing a Center for Agribusiness and Community Development or, perhaps, converting the present Center for Agriculture and Sustainable Agriculture into one. This will focus community development in the agriculture sector in making farmers entrepreneurs. Three kinds of courses can be developed: an orientation course to introduce farmers to have an idea of how agribusiness can benefit them as and their families; a certificate course for out-of-school youth to enable them to appreciate agribusiness and prepare them for engagement in agricultural enterprises; and a diploma or undergraduate course on agribusiness.
• An  action research on the current distribution of poverty reduction projects, their coverage in terms of localities and households; the services rendered; and an assessment of their effectiveness in providing services and/or providing livelihood assistance to the poorest of the poor. 
• Establishing an ABCD (Asset Based Community Development) Institute either as stand-alone institution as private sector initiative or an undertaking between the provincial government and other stakeholders. It can also be hosted by one of the academic institution. The Institute can serve as hub for PO, NGOs and LGUs involved in projects using the ABCD approach. If successful, the Institute can open its doors to course participants outside Bohol from projects which can benefit from the unique approach. 
• Conduct of case studies on the unique experiences of carrying out the ABCD approach. 
• An inventory of outstanding local initiatives such as the 17-hectare farm of Bern Karaan of Bilar which applies a unique technology to grow cacao, coconut and bananas. Case studies on these initiatives can provide valuable materials for teaching business and agriculture. 
• A study of NGOs and see what have changed in their orientation and what is regarded as their future as perceived by current leaders. 
• Application of new technologies to solve the water problem in small islands. Hilmy, our guest from Maldives discussed with the people from Pamilacan how a simple technology in South Asia has solved the problem of water scarcity.
• In-depth study of microfinance projects in the province to compare experiences and involve stakeholders in an assessment activity to find gather specific experiences for analysis on what work and what don't work in these projects.

These ideas can be given more details in the coming days to fully develop them as project proposal which can be submitted to national and regional agencies and external donors for support.  The Provincial Government can also take the lead in further studying the project ideas and assigning a task force to develop each project idea found feasible and with potential for support by LGUs and the local communities.

Still About Working with Donors

Aside from promoting the cause for democracy and reforms under difficult times, donors are actually better known for supporting initiatives that may still be outside the immediate concern of government. It takes quite a bit of time for government to initiate pioneering efforts. Most of the time, external donors come up with innovative ideas and sell these to government as pilot projects, to test their possible suitability to local-level planning and implementation. In some rare instances, it can be the other way round, the government having some concept that requires foreign funding to transform into a pilot project.

Let me list here those projects I have been involved in that without donor support might not have seen the light of day because local governments were still too short-sighted to appreciate their possible significance and impact:

-Local Resource Management Project. Funded by USAID in the late 70s and implemented in several provinces. A systematic approach was undertaken to find out what local resources existed in a locality and how community groups could be assisted to turn these into livelihood. As early at that time, there was the concern about how to link local production to market. Good experience. Sometimes our NGO ended up buying the brooms that women groups in Virac made because they could not be sold in Catanduanes. Our training director, Ike Tolentino, would bring hundreds of these brooms to Manila to sell them to office mates and in neighboring establishments.

-Child Survival and Development Project. Funded by UNICEF in the early 80s. For the first time, a project focused on the poorest provinces. The project was carried out in 8 poorest provinces in the country. The project was able to make the technical staff appreciate the relationship between poverty and armed insurgency while exerting efforts to make child-based services available to remote villages.

-Agro-Marine Project. Funded by USAID in the 80s. It demonstrated that interventions are needed both in the uplands and in lowlands and coastal areas to be able to create impact in environmental interventions.

-Remote Islands Development Project. Funded by USAID in the 80s. It drew attention to the development needs of the 50 or so small islands around the main island of Bohol. LGUs and NGOs
were able to appreciate the constraints met in making delivery of services more systematic to these outer islands.

-Peace and Development Project. Funded by EU for several provinces in Mindanao torn by conflict. Implemented by Habitat for Humanity Philippines in 2007. The project involved the integration of Muslim returnees in predominantly Christian villages facilitated through participatory local planning with the use of the Poverty Database Monitoring System (PDMS) survey methodology and software.

Outside the country, we were involved in donor-assisted projects which were equally innovative as those in the Philippines:

-Integrated Atoll Development Project.  Funded by UNDP and executed through UNOPS. Implemented in 8 atoll countries in the South Pacific and in the Maldives from 1989 to 1995. For the first time, the specific needs of small atoll countries were systematically addressed.

-Equitable and Sustainable Human Development Project. Funded by UNDP and executed through UNOPS. Implemented in the rest of the Pacific countries from 1996 to 2001 with focus on providing livelihood support to the most disadvantaged sectors of the population such as women and those who lived in remote villages.

-Solomon Islands Development Administration and Participatory Planning Project . Funded by UNDP and executed through UNOPS. Imelemented in the Solomon Islands from 1997 to 2001. The project sought to enhance local government capacities in carrying out participatory planning and project development with focus on the involvement of disadvantaged groups.

These innovative projects would not have been possible without the technical and funding support of external donors.

More About Working With Donors

To balance the negative impression which may have been created by my previous post, I will now deal with the good points of working with external donors.

First, during the Martial Law regime in the 70s, it was the donors and the projects they assisted which carried the banner for democracy and reforms. Community meetings were banned; in fact, a group of three gathering for a meeting or informal chat was considered illegal. This martial decree was generally observed throughout the country. Everyone was afraid to be arrested and thrown in jail without warrant of arrest

UNICEF was unfazed. It encouraged the LGUs and NGOs in its various projects to organize planning meetings using its mandated child focus to local development. The donor demonstrated that the child-based concerns were beyond politics, that whatever the political situation, the plans and programs for children should continue. Later, UNICEF was blamed for the leak to the media of a photo of a malnourished child during the famine in Negros that the dictatorship would like to hide. Nothing came out of it because nobody could prove it was the donor who instigated the bad publicity.

During the martial law years, UNICEF was operating globally under its development thrust labelled as basic services strategy, which emphasized the importance of popular participation in child-based development. Although I was in some sort of rehabilitation program on account of my involvement in anti-Marcos protest, UNICEF dealt with me while I was assigned with restricted movement at the Green Revolution office at the Nayong Pilipino. In more than one occasion, the donor recommended to the Government that I should be sent on study tour abroad as part of my task in looking into the participatory aspect of UNICEF-supported programs. The Government did not approve the recommendation for fear that I would not return and worst, I might make some noise about the martial law regime.

Finally, when I was allowed to live outside the confines of the Green Revolution, UNICEF provided me grants to pursue further studies at the University of Bradford in England and the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development. UNICEF supported the piloting and eventual replication of the Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Program as an innovative approach to community development.

While our group of community development workers raised funds for the physical infrastructure, UNICEF provided logistic and funding support to curriculum building and the piloting of innovative training approaches at the Ilaw International Center (IIC) established in barangay Bool, Tagbilaran City in 1983. The IIC, on account of its "Ilaw ng Buhay" approach to development, which featured partnership between local government and organized communities, was able to implement replication of the approach not only in some provinces in the Philippines, but also in other countries by training participants from Yemen and Indonesia.

Our involvement in UNICEF-assisted programs during the martial law regime brought us in close contact with other donors supporting programs advocating participatory strategies at a time when they were not encouraged by the Government. We can credit donors for their support to people-based development during the repressive regime in the Philippines.

More next post

Working with Donors

First, I would like to say most of the projects I have been involved in during the last forty years or so are funded by external donors.

I am often asked what have been the lessons learned from this experience of working in donor-funded projects. Well, my stock answer has always been the same: it often takes the patience of a mule to manage or implement externally-funded project. A positive spin can be that donor-funded projects can teach us to be patient and tolerant and flexible in dealing with all sorts of characters we meet at various stages of a project.

You will agree these are virtues one needs to cope with life, most especially in difficult circumstances. Which is to say it's a little bit more difficult to be part of a donor-funded project than a project that relies solely on local funding for support.

Let me show some examples:

-In the late 70s, I held the record for the most number of times to revise a project proposal. If I recall correctly, I had to revise it 20 times. One reason was that there were just too many experts looking at my masterpiece. I had to revise the document each time a consultant from either the Government or the donor reviewed it. The other reason was, according to a friend from the donor agency, I kept forgetting to put in the child focus. She said jokingly: "You must put the child every fifth sentence in your proposal." That's the moral - you must always be guided by the donor's mandate or bias. Forgetting this basic thing will mean you are in for a rough ride starting at the planning stage.

-Sometimes the price of success in donor-assisted projects is to give up your peaceful and quiet life. Donors would arrange visits to your project both from foreign and in-country projects or offices. Sometimes you wonder when will you have time to implement the activities of your own project.

-More often than not, your life gets complicated when your Government and the donor agency do not see eye to eye on certain project matters. You are caught in a tug-of-war between the two which can take months to unravel. I have experienced this a number of times both as a project adviser operating under Government mandate and as a consultant representing the donor's interest. In some cases, it is no longer the technical issue that is difficult to resolve, but how to save the face (or preserve the self-esteem) of the persons you are dealing with in the stand-off.

-It may happen that the conflict is between two donor agencies that support your project. Things can get so petty that you wonder whether you are still in college involved in some kind of fraternity rivalries. I had the experience of being told that I was not doing my duty just because I happened to position the official vehicle with the door displaying the other donor agency's logo!

-I have worked in a project where the donor seemed not to trust anybody from the projecr or the Government, whether it is about technical or funding matter. Staff from the donor agency will arrive in the morning by plane from Manila and leave in the afternoon to fulfill tasks which can be assigned to local counterparts, e.g. giving an overview of the workshop; introducing the participants; announcing each session; and doing a wrap-up of the activity.

-Too much centralization is still present mong some donor agencies perhaps of some sad experiences in the past, but there should a healthier outlook regarding relationships with project staff. In finances, the same donor insists on paying everything from the central office, including for the cartolina used in training. The same donor required that a copy of the marriage certificate of the hotel owners be provided before the processing of payment to show a document supporting the joint bank account where the payment will be deposited.

-The other extreme can also happen. The donor is virtually non-existent during the first or two years of a project, not issuing any guidelines, and it only appears when the project is about to end. Naturally, there will be problems created by this laissez fair approach. Then when the blame game starts, you will expect this type of donor to quickly pass the blame to the locals of course.

The foregoing are some of the things which can complicate your life in donor-assisted projects. I often find myself wishing that we go back to just working out projects on our own, utilizing local resources, and not complicating our lives and those of the people we try to help.

But this may be too simplistic a solution. The other way is for donors and their counterparts to have an honest appraisal of what they do and do not do together under the overarching theme of poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Just a reflection.

Working with Local Government

Now that I am thinking of retiring from active project work, something which I have been engaged in for more than 40 years both in my country and abroad, perhaps it is time to pause and reflect on some lessons in the hope that these can somehow be useful to anybody thinking about a career in development work. Or somehow ease the emotional burden I carry since I have been thinking during the past few days that such engagement did not really amount to anything quite different from the experience of previous development workers or prefessionals.Nothing qualitatively different from what other project implementors, consultants or volunteers have experienced about working with government or local government units, in particular.

I will try to talk about these lessons as actually advice to those who will be in projects involving local governments -

First, be prepared to be creative in dealing with political leaders. They share a common idea to be seen as doing something good for their constituency. This is a fact to be accepted rather than serve as source of cynicism about the political influence in decision-making regarding service delivery at local level. There will always be political interference, but you need not be afraid to face this fact and do a good job of explaining the project, its purpose and methodology, and sell the idea to the politicians it will be good for them to be perceived as having technical criteria in the provision of services to the people. Project resources will always be short of demand and the sooner they understand that prioritizing beneficiaries based on relative levels of deprivation, the better it will be for their image.

Second, right from the start of the project, show respect for local people and their leaders and reject all efforts of government agencies from higher levels or donors to short-cut the process by immediately plunging into the business of distributing largesse to the people to help local governments win some political points.
Be good at making local communities and their leaders feel they are really the ones making the decision, not the project, on matters such as selecting individuals or households who will receive priority assistance.

Third, it will be good to get broad-based support from civil society institutions as leverage in dealing with local governments. Be good at social mobilization work without being an added burden to local project stakeholders. Respect authority of ideas as against authority of command. More likely than not, political leaders and the government officers under their jurisdiction will substitute authority to technical criteria or information as basis for decisions involving your project. It can be discouraging and frustrating at times, but we are development workers and must persevere in the vital task to win people by ideas. Educate political leaders without lecturing them but by the sheer power of demonstration or concrete examples.

Fourth, never be afraid of those in the bureaucracy who will marginalize your managerial role and functions. That comes in the territory. Be good in managing the situation. The governance protocol in projects is often not observed because some people have been given ad hoc or informal authority. Be calm and composed and do not go into unproductive cat fights for control of turf. Always show principled leadership to overcome the damage which may occur on account of ad hoc or informal exercise of management functions.

Fifth, practise servant leadership and go an extra mile with political leaders and government officers you deal with. Have an extra storage of patience and if you feel you cannot bear the elitist tendency of the people you work with, take a little walk for some fresh air and say, "This, too, shall pass." Then come back and try to make sense of the situation and decide on what you have to do under the circumstances without putting the project in a bad light.

Sixth, always be professional and maintain the dignity of being in the service of the the disadvantaged and marginalized through development projects funded by the people of other countries. Not all development workers are given this opportunity. Show respect to fellow workers despite differences.

Seventh, smile though your heart is breaking, as the song says. In case the project is declared a failure or get aborted, never engage in a blame game.Consider the whole thing as a learning experience for all.It will be productive if you will be able to get everybody together and honestly look into the experience and reduce self-serving statements from everybody to a manageable level.

Survival Blues

For more than 40 years, our involvement with NGOs has been guided by the principle and bias of working closely with local governments. We decided on this strategy at a time in the late 1970s when it was not fashionable for NGOs to work with government. In fact, NGOs such as COPE in Cebu and others even if they were not organized by the left, adhered to what they called "No linkage with Government policy." In those days, the surest way to lose credibility was for an NGO to be known as DJANGO, an entity working as close partner of Government.

For our part, we were sandbagged into embracing an approach in close partnership with Government due to the bias imposed by the background of groups represented in the "Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life)" program in the late 70s. Those who came from the pioneering Presidential Assistant for Community Development (PACD) had a bias for working with local governments on account of the rationale for the creation of PACD itself, which is to strengthen local government capacities to extend basic services from the center to the periphery.

Those who came to the organization from the various technical disciplines (environment; agriculture; social services; health and education) had a profound respect for the role of technical departments as source of information and expertise vital to community development work.

The few who came from the left and for one reason or another surfaced from the underground to join the NGO (or were ordered to join it by the Military, nobody knows!) had to be part of the partnership approach either as a necessity or were just plain sick and tired of living life on the run.

To the credit of everyone in the organization, from the early days to the present BLDF, what was known informally as the "jawbone approach" (upper jaw - government; lower jaw - community) gained wide acceptance by both government agencies and NGOs. The theory and practice of the this collaborative approach became documented in case studies and other researches and this contributed to getting more support from international donor agencies looking for ways to bring services to the very doorstep of the target family.

I recall doing my dissertation for my Masters degree in management using the collaborative framework as experienced by our NGO from the pilot stage to advocacy and then institutionalization with the setting up of the Ilaw International Center as resource center for the replication of the approach. While the approach became widely accepted, however, this support from the Government and donors did not translate into ensuring the sustainability of our NGO. Our innovations in both the process and the approach to community development have been achieved with great financial sacrifice on the part of those who compose the old Ilaw ng Buhay organization and the present Bohol Local Development Foundation.

The cost of developing, for instance, the pro-poor targeting system and software known as PDMS has been paid for through the sacrifices of those who have remained with our NGO involvement through the past three decades.

We continue to be burdened with survival blues. Here is truly a crossroad - to survive or just perish.

Crossroads

Crossroads are crucial to milestones. You arrive at a point; there are choices and possible options to make and you need to take a pause and decide. We are familiar with this situation although we may not term it as crossroads: the choice of which college degree to pursue; whether to get married or not; to choose where to live; to buy or sell a certain property so we can use the money for something we think as more important and so on.

A day is not complete without being confronted to make a choice, whether major or minor, depending on the possible impact to our life. Some are quite important that choices appear to us as clearly marked crossroads;  all the roads seem equally important in deciding where we want to go.

Some choices are difficult to do especially if it means giving away something that you have sacrificed for and value above so many things in your life.Take our involvement with development work, particularly NGO work. There are always crossroads to take whether to continue it or not and probably, we share this situation with other colleagues who pursue development work in their own NGOs.

In the old days, say almost thirty years ago, it was of course simpler to decide whether to join or form an NGO. You have an innovative idea and the Government is not ready to try it and hence, it allows you to do it largely outside government efforts. Hence, in those days, we used to say that NGOs exist "to take advantage of the opportunities left behind by government efforts." Government is not ready to do something and some people take the initiative to do it - supposed to be temporarily until it is taken over by the Government.

In our case, in the NGOs we were involved in, there was the recognition something could be better done first outside Government with the understanding that the latter would somehow replicate or integrate our outputs in terms of strategies, training and operations methodologies or that there would be sharing of lessons learned. On the part of NGOs and the Government, there was commonality of interests in the quest for more effective means to organize and involve communities in local-level planning and decision-making; on how to generate support from the Church and other influential institutions; on how to increase the outreach of services to remote communities with local volunteers and organizations; or how to institutionalize development objectives in local plans.


In the course of time, however, the rationale for the existence of NGOs seems to have been blurred by the need to survive from day to day; you need to submit proposals to donors year in and year out to get some funding for projects; the involvement with Government deteriorated into something like an employer-employee relationship since the Goverment has become the source of funding for some activities; the NGOs
have lost their creative edge on account of circumstances brought about by dependence on donors and the Government for survival.

From Project Compassion to Ilaw ng Buhay and to BLDF, we have lived through so many crossroads and always we wind up not taking the road least taken by NGOs in similar situations - the choice to just fade away and leave everything to Government and to other civil society institutions the quest for better ways to do development work.

Now we are in this critical juncture again but the choice may not be difficult because most of us are actually in the sunset of our lives. Nature will probably do the choosing for us.



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New Optimism for the DReAMS Project

Quite embarrassing. My last blog was on 03 Dec, a few days before we left for the project monitoring mission outside the country. I recall I was trying to look back at our Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) experience in community development. Must be able to resume that journey soon.

But, first, let me just try to explain how things went with our field mission and where are we now in the project. John Maraguinot, the deputy manager, and I went on this 25-day mission in December to our project sites in Rajshahi, Bangladesh; Guntur, India; and Thimphu, Bhutan. John M (we refer to him as such so we will not confuse it with John Vistal who is the head of the Project Oversight Committee) took care of the financial compliance part of the mission, while I was responsible for the project monitoring component.

I will confine myself to talking abou the monitoring part.

What we would like to monitor was the current status of the project vis-a-vis producing the expected key output, which is to bring about the complementation of two tools, Poverty Database Monitoring System (PDMS) and ecoBUDGET, local-level planning and in the process, achieve significant access to services by communities and households as provided by local governments.

The project was supposed to be on its final year in 2012 but due to problems associated with financial and reporting compliance, there was delay in funding which disrupted the implementation of some critical activities and hence, the extension for six months or until July, 2013.

I have actually reported on the highlights of the monitoring mission in a report given to the donor, the European Union, and the project partners in the various countries, including our partner international NGO, ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives). I put text and pictures, too, in my Facebook accounts based on the key findings and recommendations during the first week of January, a few days after we arrived.

It has been a joy to report that despite financial constraints, everything was on track in producing the key output: the environmental master budget has been prepared and approved by the highest government authorities in each municipality or city; the household poverty surveys based on the PDMS methodology have been undertaken; and that out of three pilot sites, it is only in Guntur that the software has not been installed.

Now our admin and finance staff are doing everything to bring Tony Irving, the British IT Expert to Guntur to see how to proceed with modifying the software taking into account revisions made on it to suit local conditions. We all hope this can happen soon because Guntur is by far the project site with a pronounced institutional framework to make PDMS+ecoBUDGET sustainable. It has an agency at State level, at Andha Pradesh, focused on providing technical assistance to local governments in establishing a poverty database and using it to prepare poverty reduction plans and projects. At municipal level, it has a poverty alleviation unit with community organizers working with a network of POs and NGOs in targeted slum communities trained to help these communities prepare plans and implement projects.

Political commitment to environmental causes is high in both the government and community levels. This is the ideal situation to come up with a baseline on the poverty and environmental situation in a given area, generate local plans and prepare, implement and monitor catalyst projects using the two tools.

It is a joy to report all these considering it was the Swiss external evaluator herself who helped convince the donor to find the funding resources to bring us to see the actual situation happening in our projects. We thought we would see nothing but problems due to the financial constraints met by all project partners. What we saw instead was the resourcefulness of local governments and communities to make do with what they have and proceed to implement activities towards the achievement of the expect output.

What we saw during our project monitoring mission gave us new optimism to proceed with the project given this remarkable commitment on the part of the people we work with in the DReAMS (Development of Resources for Access to Municipal Services) project.