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.
WE were among the young graduates from UP Los Banos who were trained by the former PACD workers on how to effectively undertake community organizing and realize the vision and mission of what Nestor Pestelos has referred to as 'walang kamatayang community development', which I interpret as walang hangganang paglilingkod sa bayan. This work experience has been very influential in shaping some of my research interests, both as an academic and as an extension worker. I am glad to have been a part of that "Crazy Company". I think that we were not crazy, - I think we were simply an idealist bunch of believers - we have faith on the capability and capacity of everyone (young and old, women and men, rich and poor - altogether) to work collaboratively in order to reduce the difficulties in life that are faced by many marginal groups. Many thanks for posting this piece...and keep on believing ;->
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. We will keep the faith to the very end. On that label given the group, I should have said the group "endearingly called The Crazy Company." Either Piux or Bitoy must have been the first to call us that way. And the description stuck for years to mean we would try any once, twice, thrice or forever to get our point across about having a profound bias for the poor. Cheers!
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