THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Many of us probably remember this poem we were made to recite when we were in the grades, “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Some from among us past sixty years old may still quote the whole poem which consists of only four stanzas. Among the four, the last stanza is likely the most studied – and remembered:

I shall be telling this with a sigh (underscoring ours)
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

A writer says the poem is about "the human tendency to wobble illogically in decision and later to assume that the decision was, after all, logical and enormously important,” but there is also the tendency to tell about it “with a sigh,” something which makes many think the poet regrets having taken the road less travelled.

I have been thinking about the poem, this last stanza in particular, the past few nights, when I have been sleepless. Rather than think of the proverbial sheep, I have been thinking of roads.

Not the roads with bridges and kickbacks which allegedly make infrastructure in government budgets quite attractive for some people to run for public office election after election. It’s more about roads as part of a journey to define one’s life, set its parameters and endure possible turmoil brought by the weather within that perpetually brings storms to test one’s will to proceed and walk the road chosen for the long and definitive walk towards creating one’s own destiny.

In 1982, at the late age of 40 when I had taken too many roads, too many destinies, too many false starts, dictated by circumstances or by false hopes, I arrived in Bohol not for the first time because I had previous official trips before as part of projects, but this time to stay longer and build a community development training center that hopefully could last for decades.

This one road I took to be part of a dream shared with some of the country’s pioneers in professional community development work: to establish a  repository of experiences to provide lessons and guide those whom we called in those years as fieldworkers in their efforts to reach what UNICEF and our other donors called the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the disadvantaged. In brief, the poor and the downtrodden who seemed to be invisible to policymakers and planners.

I have remained in that road although through the years there were detours that I took but these were in my mind merely side roads to cope with temporary road blocks, constraints that NGOs like ours usually meet on the road to reach our respective mission: lack of funding; withdrawal of support from government due to perceived disloyalty to politicians or their respective parties in power; donor requirements which tend to favor those with relatively more resources which can come up with counterpart funding. In some cases, the detours were a necessity to remind us that despite the dedication and the passion, the flesh is heir to illnesses and the usual mortality stuff, an expiration date imposed by genes and the oftentimes impersonal and self-limiting economic and physical environment.

In recent years, however, it has been more difficult to travel this development path. Aside from problems arising from the usual limitations of being a marginalized NGO, the task environment itself, the macro context where we must do development work has changed drastically in recent years: the Government at national and subnational levels seems to suffer from its own

The drug menace in Bohol has brought to the surface images which portray the  Bol-anon way of life totally alien to what we have known through the years. Political leaders as well as those in the Church and civil society organizations are perceived as inept in the face of  modern-day problems such as the widespread distribution and use of illegal drugs.

Where to Bohol? Where do we go from here? What has happened to our faith in ourselves to dream and recreate a province based on the age-old values of hard work and mutual sharing with kin and neighbors alike? Where is the impact of projects worth millions of dollars given by the peoples of the world to address social deprivation in our midst? When will this “Me Only” and “Me Too” mentality end or at least modified to include a concern for those “who have less in life” in the words of the Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, maligned in history as the creation of the CIA,  but should also be remembered as the one who launched the community development movement in the 1950s?

In those nights that I could not sleep, after being pummeled left and right by opposing views about the Masapano massacre, the deepening silence about poverty and the drug menace in Bohol, the sight of young men and women seemingly under the influence, or either just confused which road to take or probably with brains shrunked prematurely by repeated alcohol and drug abuse, I could only raise questions and hope we can find a new day in my adopted province and justify again this choice of my final road either to redemption or perdition.

May we all sleep soundly again here in this our beloved province.

NMP/13 February 2015/ 8.33 a.m. 

SUSTAINABILITY

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

In 1987, the United Nations introduced the term “sustainable development” which means “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This definition caught fire among governments and civil society organizations, particularly those seeking UN assistance for their projects. Projects are expected to contribute to sustainable development, which means they have to contribute to environmental concerns apart from other having other objectives, to meet funding requirements of international donors.

All throughout the 90s and the current decade, sustainability has been something to aspire for in development planning and implementation. During the initial years, being sustainable meant that a project had to do something for the environment, perceived as needing more efforts for conservation and protection, to ensure a habitable planet for present and future generations.

Like other buzz words and phrases identified with externally-funded development initiatives, however, sustainability has taken new meanings which reflect other key concerns in a world which is getting more complex from day to day. It has been co-opted by other advocacies that today a project to be sustainable has to reflect interventions that contribute to gender equality, promotion of micro enterprises, human and child rights, and other concerns.

Given this situation, what has been proposed is to adopt a “program approach,” as UNDP promotes, which means adopting an umbrella program to encompass single-motive projects which can deal with specific problems and concerns but taken as a whole, they contribute individually to achieving sustainable development.

A cultural event which I attended recently brought me to thinking about sustainable development in a slightly different light. This was the invitational premier of Teatro Porvenir, meaning Theater for the Future, identified with the hero Andres Bonifacio, in those days of the revolution against Spain. Cultural guru Gardy Labad and his Kasing Sining, staged  the play  in a cockpit in Baclayon  to a crowd of artists, critics and professionals, including several government officials and several personalities from the academe. The two-hour show was considered a tremendous success based on the feedbacks given during the forum after the show.

The novelty of having the show in a cockpit, used as entertainment and gambling venue through the ages, did not escape notice by the discerning audience. Imagine, someone said, if cockpits in the province could be transformed into a community theatre, Indeed it will bring cultural shows to the people and propagate the thinking that culture is not only about movies and Broadway plays and classic music. 

Prof. Mariano Luspo of Holy Name University observed that there was significance in turning a place , where cocks are slaughtered in entertaining brutal cockfights. He wondered aloud if the use of cockpits as cultural venue could lead to forming an organization dedicated to the prevention of cruelty to artists! He noted such organization would have the same acronym as the one for preventing cruelty to animals.

Some comments during the forum were related to sustainability. These feedbacks actually deal with sustainability although not in the sense intended by the UN’s definition of sustainable development, not at a macro context anyway. Those comments expressed by several persons during the after-show forum concerned a basic issue, to my mind: how can you make this cultural presentation survive financially and ensure that it can be shown in cockpits throughout the year? Everybody seemed to agree that this kind of presentation, not necessarily about historical topics, can make use of an existing asset, such as cockpits, and transform it into something developmental, e.g. raising consciousness about social issues related to poverty.

To be sure, it required funds to mobilize more than 40 performers and bring them to a central place for rehearsals night after night for a month. Several resource persons or consultants are needed to assist Gardy Labad in managing these rehearsals for the dance, the dialogue, the various fight scenes. It might be they were supporting Gardy as volunteers but in the future, volunteerism may not be enough to ensure professional technical services.

Most of those in the cast were high school students and I can just imagine the tremendous efforts exerted to turn them into a highly competent and disciplined lot. Future productions may require a core group of performers with a professional support staff if theater production in cockpits will materialize. Selling affordable tickets at Php 130 per ticket and getting sponsors for refreshments and meals during rehearsals may not be, if I can be allowed to use the word, sustainable in the long run.

Some of those who spoke during the forum noted that to raise funds, foreign tourists could be motivated to attend such shows and pay. On this matter, the following suggestions were made: to shorten the presentation, something less than two hours; there must be a Teatro Porvenir “light,” meaning something not too heavy in treatment or that the viewers have to be given a more audience-friendly version of the show.

Atty. Doy Nunag, former head of the Provincial Tourism Council and owner of the Amarela Resort in Panglao, says marketing the show to tourists will require understanding first the actual situation of tourists, their need to explore in depth what is happening in a given place, its products and attractions, but at same time, doing all these efficiently within a given time frame.

From all these discussions after the show, I have come to appreciate the importance of financial sustainability as the driving force behind the advocacy for all kinds of sustainability to ensure that projects can work for a better environment and more progress in other advocacies such as those related to gender equality and poverty reduction. The project and the implementing or proponent organization have to survive first financially before we can even venture into the other elements of sustainable development as a global issue. Indeed we need hard-nosed tourism industry experts such as Atty. Nunag to match the passion and commitment of cultural gurus such as Gardy Labad if we have to achieve sustainable development in the eco-cultural tourism sector of the local economy. ###

NMP/written 01 Feb 2015

REACHING THE POOR

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

For both the Catholic clergy and the Government, Pope Francis during his recent visit stressed the need to be mindful of those in the peripheries, meaning those who are “poor, marginalized and victims of injustice.” He admonished political leaders to reject corruption because it robs the poor of much-needed resources. For the religious leaders, on the other hand, he advised them to be ambassadors for Christ by living in poverty for “only by becoming poor ourselves, by stripping away our complacency, will we be able to identify with the least of our brothers and sisters.”

Pres. Aquino, in an interview, said the Pope’s repeated plea to help millions of poor Filipinos was not meant for him since his administration had already pulled at least two and a half million Filipinos out of poverty due to its poverty reduction projects in education, livelihood and employment since 2010 when he assumed office. What he did not mention was that poverty incidence among households and the population has virtually remained the same.

For his part, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle in thanking the Pope for the visit cited specific groups who are in the peripheries: “I say thank you very much on behalf of the street children, the orphans, the widows, the homeless, the informal settlers, the laborers, the farmers, the fisherfolk, the sick, the abandoned elderly, the families of missing persons, the victims of discrimination, violence, abuse, exploitation, human trafficking, the Filipino migrant workers and their families, the survivors of natural calamities and armed conflicts, the non-Christian Catholics, the followers of non-Christian religions, the promoters of peace, especially in Mindanao, and  creation that groans.”

Indeed one can be isolated and condemned to be in the peripheries by virtue of one’s geographic location, political and religious affiliations, gender orientation, minority advocacies and class distinctions.  Enlightened and democratic governance, whether by the State, Church and civil society organizations are supposed to reach the unreached in the peripheries. Otherwise, pro-poor development will occur only as exhortations in speeches and grand pronouncements from leaders of various persuasions.

In the light of the Pope’s message, delivered with passion, sincerity and commitment, it is best to assess if we have really reflected enough of the pro-poor focus in the respective plans, programs and projects of each key institution in our province. Based on our experience, we have had efforts to reach more of the disadvantaged and the marginalized, but they tend to be hindered by lack of enough resources to produce a reliable and comprehensive database, to indicate where the poor households are or where the specific poverty groups live and work, their number, their particular level of deprivation and what package of services reaches them, their quality and quantity and at what particular time frame to ensure maximum effectiveness.

Due to the high costs required in facilitating service delivery to far-flung barangays, programs for the traditionally unreached sectors of the population cannot go beyond several kilometers from the town centers. In some cases, those in remote communities are expected to go down to centers quite a distance from their homes to be able to avail of much-needed services from either the government or the private sector. Indeed there is a need to review the network of extension workers from various sectors and determine their actual outreach to specific households.

In the light of scarcity of resources, it is important that accurate mapping of outreach networks of agencies and institutions be undertaken to pinpoint areas of improvement in the whole business of reaching the poor in their various locations or in the specific conditions of their access to services, information and actual development interventions. It will take strong collaboration among agencies and institutions to produce such vital database to ensure effective pro-poor targeting.

Pope Francis, on the other hand, advised the clergy to live in poverty because “it is only by becoming poor ourselves, by stripping away our complacency, will we be able to identify with the least of our brothers and sisters.”  This piece of advice is good to hear in the context of “a society which has grown comfortable with social exclusion, polarization and scandalous inequality.” 

 In our view, it is enough that the clergy understand and feel the situation of the poor through immersion in community life, but it may be impractical to expect that the Church will do away with its infrastructure and relatively vast resources which with passion, sincerity and commitment can be made to help alleviate the dismal situation of the poor in our province.###

NMP/21 Jan 2015/12.33 p.m. 

POVERTY IN BOHOL REVISITED

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Reality, says Pope Francis, is better than mere ideas. He used this idea to justify why he junked his written notes to just speak from the heart, as he put it, in one of his memorable homilies while in the country two weeks ago. Now that the euphoria of Pope Francis’ visit to the country is about to fade, although his dominant presence remains memorable by labels heaped on him, such as the Rockstar Pope, Cool Pope or People’s Pope, it is best to put some of his ideas in local context. Hence, let us try to revisit the reality of poverty here in Bohol in response to the ideas of the good Pope.

Preaching to the multitude about the need to walk, eat, work and live with the poor will tug the heart’s strings, but the reality is that such admonitions, which the poor and rich alike have been hearing from time immemorial, will amount to nothing if not coupled with a cohesive, multi-level response. Poverty is a complex social phenomenon and it requires, as development planners know, relevant policies, comprehensive and effective plans and programs, as well as self-transformation on the part of both the haves and have-nots, the elites and the downtrodden.\

In brief, the war against poverty needs the equivalent of a Bible as guide and a resolute army of combatants with the correct strategy to execute. Otherwise, we will just go around in circles and end up as all victims and penitents in a holy war of attrition and despair. It is to the credit of the government, civil society and the people of the province that at the start of the decade, while we felt humbled by being ranked as among the country’s poorest 20 provinces, Bohol has registered eventually significant gains in this series of spirited campaigns against high levels of deprivation at all fronts to merit abolition of its poverty reduction management office. Subsequently, the Provincial Government of Bohol announced victory over armed insurgency, rooted no doubt in poverty and social inequality, at the beginning of a new decade.

Instead of indulging in self-praises and complacency, it is time to retrace our steps and make sure we are still on the right track in addressing the scourge of poverty considered as the main source of sufferings for millions of people on the planet and breeds other social ills which prevent the full flowering of civilization and God’s kingdom on earth. It is time to heed the Pope’s words and combat resolutely what he termed as “scandalous inequality” in our midst.

In our province, as in other provinces, geographic remoteness is a cause of inequality. As early as 2000, our planners at provincial and municipal/city levels were guided, or supposed to be guided, by the findings of a study cited in the 2003-2015 Bohol Framework on Poverty Reduction, used as guide by all participating agencies and entities, which described the “poverty landscapes” of the province.

As indicated in scooping studies previously undertaken with AusAid assistance, the highest incidence of poverty is found: a) in the many small islands and coastal areas located mostly around the northern half of Bohol; and  b) in the upland and watershed communities in the interior part of the province.

The small island-coastal zone: Based on the area-focused scooping studies conducted in 2001 under AusAid assistance, this “poverty landscape” has the following features:

• all 59 small islands have a population of 61,613, while the 294 coastal barangays have 370,710 people or a total population of 432,323 or 38% of total Bohol population (1,137,268);
• 30 of these small islands and islets are in northwestern Bohol belonging to 59 barangays;
• the occupants of these islands are primarily fisherfolks whose resource base lies mostly in the country’s only double reef area, in the Danajon bank area, considered as a seriously degraded marine resource;
• large families, more than the national and provincial average;
• the people in this small-island coastal zone have limited access to health services and medicines;
• the schools have inadequate basic facilities and observed to be overcrowded;
• fresh water is scarce, with rainwater as source for washing, and drinking water is supplied by mainland or larger islands;
• very thin topsoil, if it  is present at all, often affected by salt intrusion and suited mainly for growing coconut;
• most of these islands have mangrove forests, some of which are man-made; and
• there are fewer livelihood options in this area.

Upland communities: The upland communities have approximately a population of 176,657, representing 16% of total population.  Small-scale farming units abound with low productivity in the uplands. These communities have poor access to health services and medicines, but have relatively better access to schools compared to small islands.  Due to the condition of feeder roads, motorbikes for hire are the principal means of transport. There is still remaining good forest cover in most of the uplands. The northern uplands have more natural sources of water than those in the south.    

Watershed Communities: Bohol has three major watersheds (Loboc, Wahig-Inabanga and Abatan) composed of 112 barangays with a population of 107,766, representing 9% of the total population. These geographic areas are also characterized by high poverty incidence. Since they cross political boundaries, watersheds present unique administrative, bio-physical and social complexities. 

Specific Poverty Groups

The Provincial Government has also identified the following as specific poverty groups and, hence, they require priority attention in terms of supportive policies and project interventions:

Farm/non-farm laborers : Their task environment is characterized by labor seasonality. They are paid low wages on account of abundant labor supply vis-à-vis demand, and their low level of skills. They are exposed to hazards, e.g. stone-crushing. This target group has limited options for non-agricultural employment.

Tenant and/or part-time farmers:  They have small farm size.  Their farm productivity is low due to limited and poor quality irrigation, low value crops, poor soil, and inadequate technical inputs.  They pay high interest rates for loans from informal sources.  Being tenants, they have no incentives nor motivation to improve their assets. They incur high production costs. This target group is highly vulnerable to weather changes.

Marginal and/or part-time fishers:  They experience declining fish catch due to degraded marine habitats, intrusion of commercial fishing, destructive methods and overfishing. Municipal waters have not been delineated to indicate their resource base. They have inadequate skills for basic livelihood and limited options for non-fishing employment especially for those in small islands. Poor enforcement of local fishing ordinances affects their livelihood. 

 Disadvantaged groups (unemployed, scavengers, single mothers, children and the elderly, disabled and sick members of poor households, out-of-school youth):  They have few opportunities resulting from limited skills, low education attainment, and difficult access to capital. Their poor health put them at a grave disadvantage vis-à-vis other population groups. 

The year 2015 ends the pursuit of the 15-year development agenda mandated by the UN to reduce by half poverty incidence globally. Now is indeed the time to revisit poverty in the province and ask the question whether or not the configuration of poverty landscapes and the characteristics of target poverty groups have changed for the better, whether or not the Government and its development have reached remote communities and the disadvantaged families and groups with adequate information and services to lift them out of severe deprivation and despair.

Guided by aspirations articulated by Pope Francis to address poverty, let us proceed to look back and see how we can formulate a new cohesive response to end inequality in this our province.

NMP/19 January 2015/7.57 a.m. 

The “Terrorism of Gossip” and the Drug Menace in Bohol

The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

A column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

In recent months, newspaper headlines in Bohol have brought to prominence what has been suspected by the public all along – that the province has seemingly become a major transshipment point for illegal drugs and that drug pushers and abusers have magnified their presence quite significantly over the last few years. More alarmingly, drug syndicates are generally perceived to be operating in the province with knowledge of, if not connivance, with duly constituted authorities.

Drug-related killings and other heinous crimes, such as rape (in one case, a mother was raped by her own son, who is a drug addict); physical assault, theft and robbery. The local papers have displayed on their front pages pictures of alleged drug pushers shot dead in broad daylight, in busy streets, of Tagbilaran City and in the towns mostly by unknown assassins in motorcycles riding in tandem.

It is best to go beyond what Pope Francis refers to as the “terrorism of gossip” and confront this pernicious drug menace systematically and proceed to work out and implement a comprehensive strategy to address it.

Whether by covert police operations or by vigilantes, these killings damage the traditionally peaceful Bol-anon way of life. They do not reflect the vast reservoir of social capital and community cohesiveness that Bohol is noted for both in the country and abroad. It negates what has been vaunted about as our humane brand of life in Bohol.

Pursuing police or vigilante operations to address the current drug menace will not be effective in the long run. A multi-pronged approach is needed which may include the following:

• a comprehensive public awareness campaign aimed at enlisting people and institutions at the grassroots level in the fight against drug abuse;
• a committed police force well-equipped to combat syndicates who use illegal means and intimidation to expand their network of  drug pushers and other shady agents in every sector of society; and, equally important,
• a rehabilitation center which will combine community-based approaches with cost-effective clinical methods and a humanitarian and eclectic strategy to deal with hundreds of drug users who seem to inhabit practically all the barangays in the province whose presence threatens social stability and the attainment of peace and progress and represents a sheer waste in human resources.

It’s amazing how the drug menace confronting Boholano society has not merited broad-based support from all sectors. Instead, gossips abound on who are protecting the drug syndicates, who are pushers and users in a particular barangay or office. It is time to go beyond rumor-mongering and take the drug abuse problem by the horn, so to speak.

In my more than thirty years of helping implement programs and projects primarily for the disadvantaged and marginalized, who necessarily include women and the youth, I am convinced that the drug menace in our midst has to be addressed in a comprehensive way and specific roles assigned to individual agencies, institutions and organizations within the context of an all-embracing program approach to avoid ineffective piecemeal solutions.

For our part, with the support of our NGO, the Bohol Local Development Foundation, we will devote time and other resources to work with relevant institutions in setting up a New Day Recovery Center Bohol patterned after NDRC Davao. It is proposed that the latter consider NDRC Bohol as an affiliate and part of its corporate social responsibility. In this way, its internationally-known experts, most of them Boholanos, will reach more clients among drug abuse victims among the disadvantaged sectors of the population in their home province.

Most drug abuse victims belong to poor families who will not have the means to access quality rehabilitation procedures and tools. We have to reach them with much-needed services through a Center in the province. Towards this end, consultations are now being done with relevant academic and civil society organizations and with NDRC Davao. Hopefully, the other program components will be taken care of by the Government and other entities.

Our NGO will make available the use of a 1.2 hectare of land for this catalyst project. It is hoped this will help carry the discussion about the drug menace in Bohol beyond gossips. ###

NMP/15 January 2015/1.36 p.m. 

Beyond Economics

The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey

A Column by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS


The 2015 World Development Report of the World Bank is entitled “Mind, Society, and Behavior.” From the title itself, you can see that it will depart from the usual content of World Bank reports which are rich with economic analyses and forecasts.

This 2015 World Development Report supports the view that human beings go beyond economics, calculating costs and benefits in making decisions, but rather they behave in a way that is influenced by their own set of beliefs and assumptions, dictated by culture and institutional alliances, and that we need psychology and the social sciences to fully understand and influence positively how people think and act.

The Report notes that standard economic models  “often assume that people consider all possible costs and benefits from a self-interested perspective and then make a thoughtful and rational decision. “ This approach although useful … “  has a liability: it ignores the psychological and social influences on behavior. “

The Report further states: “Individuals are not calculating automatons.  Rather,   people are malleable and emotional actors whose decision making is influenced by contextual cues, local social networks and social norms, and shared mental models.”  All these factors determine what are perceived as desirable and possible, or “thinkable “ for themselves and their unique situation.

The Report notes that new tools have emerged based on of the “full consideration of human factors” in development policy and planning but these tools “do not displace existing policy approaches based on affecting self-interested personal incentives; rather they complement and enhance them.”

Now it can be asked:  what are the implications of the use of the new framework on development policy formulation, planning and implementation?  Indeed these approaches as a result of the mind, society and behavior framework “ do not replace standard economics, ” the Report asserts.  Rather they “enhance our understanding of the development process and the way development policies and interventions can be designed and implemented.”

Some examples of the practical application of the approaches can be cited or quoted from the Report:

Conventional financial literacy programs in low income countries have had limited effects (Xu and Zia 2012). In contrast, a recent effort in South Africa to teach financial literacy through an engaging television soap opera improved the financial choices that individuals made.

Financial messages were embedded in a soap opera about a financially reckless character. Households that watched the soap opera for two months were less likely to gamble and less likely to purchase goods through an expensive installment plan (Berg and Zia 2013).

The households felt emotionally engaged with the show’s characters, which made them more receptive to the financial messages than would be the case in standard financial literacy programs. The success of the intervention depended on “thinking socially”—our tendency to identify with and learn from others.

Note: Imagine if we can insert developmental messages in those teleseryes seen by millions not 
 only in the Philippines but in other countries where many Filipinos live and work. 

In Ethiopia, disadvantaged individuals commonly report feelings of low psychological agency, often making comments like “we have neither a dream nor an imagination” or “we live only for today” (Bernard, Dercon, and Taffesse 2011, 1).

In 2010, randomly selected households were invited to watch an hour of inspirational videos comprising four documentaries of individuals from the region telling their personal stories about how they had improved their socioeconomic position by setting goals and working hard. Six months later, the households that had watched the inspirational videos had higher total savings and had invested more in their children’s education, on average.

Surveys revealed that the videos had increased people’s aspirations and hopes, especially for
their children’s educational future (Bernard and others 2014). The study illustrates the ability of
an intervention to change a mental model—one’s belief in what is possible in the future. (Bernard and Taffesse 2014).

Note: Calling the attention of Lutgardo Labad and his cultural troops – this validates what you 
have been saying all along that cultural shows, movies and the art have a vital role to play not 
only in creating awareness but in transforming behavior. 

Based on research findings, the Report says that some of the new approaches cost very little to implement because they involve only modifying project design or implementation strategies, such as:

• changing the timing of cash transfers
• labeling something differently
• simplifying the steps for service take-up
• offering reminders
• activating a latent social norm, or
• reducing the salience of a stigmatized identity.

In the Philippines, some of these efforts to go beyond economics in development policy and planning work are not entirely new. Some projects have piloted or field-tested approaches that used to be derided by the economists who dominate planning hierarchies. It is time to go back to these small-scale initiatives and document them properly to be able to extract lessons and move on to demonstrating the role of psychology and the social sciences in macro development work.

The framework provided by the World Report can be applied and field-tested to understand better the possible constraints to be addressed in efforts to go beyond economics in the formulation of policies, plans and projects. Otherwise, the tremendous research and other technical work that have gone into producing the game-changing 2015 World Report will not do much to help reduce poverty and ensure sustainable human development in this our planet.

In Bohol, as in other provinces, the orientation of most projects is largely determined by external donors who fund them. The donors provide the templates for analysis, project preparation, implementation and evaluation. Hence, donors need to read the World Report and see how its findings and recommendations can be applied to the planning and project development processes which they support – and influence. ###

NMP/07 Jan 2014/6.46 p.m. 

First, A Record of My Own Journey

The Bohol Tribune

 In This Our Journey

A Column by: 

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

We are all in a sort of journey, from one starting point to a destination, whether such journey is planned or not. In a sense, from each other’s vantage point, we are all passers-by. We watch each other pass by and occasionally we stop to compare notes on where we are going or how the journey has been.  

Life, in a way, is made up of these journeys, each as important as the other because they contribute to our sense of direction, which paths to choose for a specific purpose. Or, we don’t choose at all, letting circumstances or emotions dictate where we want to go. Some people feel happy doing it this way.

Each destination is as good as the other in so far as it contributes to our sense of well-being, as long as it does not harm anyone and, better still, if it amounts to something good for all or to a significant number of people.

This column seeks to track such journeys, whether in my own life or in others, fellow passers-by in the search for something to love, to believe in, to fight for or simply to marvel at in this our still-expanding universe of 17 billion planets.

Let me, then, start with my own journey –

Journeys, actually, but let us just choose one, which is the main one, the path taken that led me to Bohol 33 years ago. I have done countless self-assessments and group meditations, retreats, confessions and diary keeping or journal writing for the most part of my 72 years and by now I am convinced that a traumatic experience when I was fourteen years old led me to take the development path I have taken.

My father died at 23 years of age when I was only three years old. I grew up in a family of women consisting of my maternal grandmother, mother and a younger sister.  When I had problems, like being bullied in school, I would visit the grave of my father and there I would tell him everything.  But one day, when I went to the cemetery to complain that I could not buy Babe Ruth chocolate during recess, I found his grave was gone. In its place was the ornate tomb of a rich Chinese businessman  complete with huge candles, flowers and baskets, some still with apples and other fruits.

I rushed to the factory where mother was working and asked her where my father’s grave was transferred and she said that if some years elapsed and we failed to pay the annual fee of Php 50, then the administrator of the Catholic cemetery could just take away the bones and give the space to another family.

I went to look for the parish priest and found him asleep and I was told he could not be disturbed in his siesta.  In frustration and disgust, I unzipped my short pants and urinated all over the balcony and vowed I would never go back to church again. During that week, I resigned as auxiliary member of the Legion of Mary.  It took me years to get back to the faith.

This traumatic experience colored my perception of the world I was growing up in and through the years, I used it to explain my bias in working with projects among the poor and marginalized. In the late 1970s, I worked with UNICEF-assisted projects in the eight provinces considered as the country’s poorest.  From 1982 to 1989, I worked with the pioneers of community development to establish the Ilaw International Center in Bohol which served to field-test and document innovative approaches to improving service delivery to remote communities. In the 1990s, I served in various UNDP projects in underserved atoll countries in the Pacific and had the chance to work in Maldives, in the Indian Ocean.

Three months after retiring from UNDP, in April 2002, I joined the Provincial Government of Bohol as volunteer consultant to be part of a team at the Provincial Planning and Development Office (PPDO) with the mission to help get the province out of the list of top 20 poorest provinces.  The following year, I founded the Bohol Local Development Foundation to serve as partner of the PPDO in developing the Provincial Database and Monitoring System (PDMS) which served as tool to identify the poorest households based on core poverty indicators and achieve more effective targeting of service delivery to them. From Bohol, the pro-poor targeting tool has been brought to several cities and municipalities in the country as well as in other countries, namely, India, Bangladesh and Bhutan.

In recent years, PDMS has been used by local government units in combination with other tools and approaches such as in the promotion of asset-based community development, gender balance in project planning and implementation, eco-budgeting, as well as medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs). We have put all information about this pro-poor targeting tool and its possible applications in a website www.pdmsplus.com  for those interested that the real poor in a particular purok, barangay and municipality can be identified properly sans political interventions and reached with adequate information and services.

This is the journey I have taken for the most part of a lifetime conditioned by a traumatic experience I had while growing up in my hometown in Quezon province. In efforts to achieve clarity of targets and goals for my own development journey, I am in a sense looking for the bones of my father in remote places and among both the downtrodden and those who profess to serve them .

Such is the way I will view  similar journeys taken by fellow passers-by in our common quest for meaning and commitment in an increasingly complicated and hostile world. Join me, then, in this our journey. ###

NMP/06 Jan 2015/11.10 p.m.