MUCH THANKS TO ALL FOR THIS RAPPLER AWARD

MUCH THANKS TO ALL FOR THIS RAPPLER AWARD

First, much thanks to Rappler for this 2015 Enterprise Mover Award which we regard as recognition of the work of our NGO, the Bohol Local Development Foundation in our efforts through the years to link households and communities that they may have better access to useful information and services from the Government and its development partners.

In a sense, it is also a recognition of our lifetime work with the country’s pioneers of community development and the fieldworkers and volunteers from younger generations who have aspired to replace them in the often difficult but ultimately rewarding task of helping the most disadvantaged of our people be part of mainstream development.

It is reaffirmation of our belief that in the final analysis, all development is local.

We believe that all global development agendas, the Millennium Development Goals and their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals, and all policies and programs promoted by international aid agencies are mere rhetoric if they are not translated into specific and concrete messages, tools and approaches, and more importantly, services that will help liberate the poor from the constraints brought about by deprivation and underdevelopment.

This award is a recognition that Rappler and those who support its meritorious advocacies for change share with our NGO the firm belief that those who have been disenfranchised by geographic isolation, as well as economic, cultural and religious biases, and by institutionalized corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, must be reached and engaged to participate meaningfully in a program of planned change.

On the matter of enterprise development among our people, we ourselves are not entrepreneurs, but development workers who believe that the marginalized among our people have skills and other assets which have made them survived all these years and that we can help them take advantage of opportunities for further growth and development.

We would like to believe this is the same task for which generations of development workers, extension workers, community organizers and mobilizers have dedicated their lives to since the initiation of professional community development in this country in the 1950s.

Through four decades of development work, mostly in the province of Bohol, we have seen the evolution of development fieldworkers assuming various roles: as links between service agencies and the villages; as trainers to community groups and their leaders; and, on the whole, as bearers of good hope to specific households and groups of people who have to be reached still by the benefits of committed democratic governance and global development.

As Rappler continues to advocate and demonstrate, tools developed during this digital age, which has given rise to the prominent role of social media in practically all aspects of our lives, we need to mobilize technology-savvy young people in their thousands to use their newly-acquired knowledge and tools in the service of the people in their respective localities. We must use these gadgets to reach communities, groups and individual households which may still be isolated and bounreached.

We share with Rappler and its supporters the vision to bring millions of our people to the mainstream of development, as both beneficiaries and participants in the pursuit of global and national development goals, which must be articulated either formally and informally in local community plans and family aspirations.

Much thanks to the votes cast in my favor during the public polling, the endorsements and votes from friends, relatives and colleagues from various networks; the campaigns waged by several close friends, associates and groups.

We thank the following close friends who worked day and night with their families to mobilize votes in my favor: Milwida Sevilla-Reyes, Quezon High Class 1958, based in Sydney; Isa Losloso-Rivera, based in Chicago, and Nini De Asis, both from the same Class 58; Dr. Mimosa Cortes, retired UPLB faculty and Sigma Delta head; Keats Yapchiongco, former Illustrious Fellow, Upsilon Sigma Phi; Corazon Lanuza, Dick Asi, and their Class 68 classmates; Gen. Charlemagne Alejandrino, MSEUF Vice Pres. Benilda Villenas, Jane Asensi Malaluan, and many others from QPHS Class 70; Norma Tulio, Cecilio Adorna, Richard Prado of UNICEF and Alcanz Consulting; Lillian Pestelos Cancino, Rhodora Pestelos Renacido; Mohamed Hilmy, Tarcissius Tara, Rex Horoi from the Maldives and the Pacific; Mabel Cuison and other friends from Habitat for Humanity; Gardy Labad and his Kasing-Sining group.

I thank Jason Tulio who nominated me whom I had not met before.

And many, many more I have to thank. I will find time to review my notes and thank everyone who has helped in this campaign. Pasensya na muna kung may nakalimutan. Mahina ang kalaban! We will go back to this list later.

We thank the Upsilon Sigma Phi and Sigma Delta Phi and those from other fraternities and sororities from UP Los Banos and other campuses; youth groups, women's groups, and senior citizens' associations in our project sites; high school and college classmates; DevCom group Grockers, Bohol Planning and Development Office (PPDO), and the Municipal Planning and Development Coordinators of Bohol; project partners in the LGUs and national agencies in the province; friends and project partners from UNDP, UNICEF, AusAID, USAID, CIDA, ADB in the various countries where I was assigned; close friends from Christian, Muslim and Buddhist communities in which I did project work during the last forty years … to all of you, this Award I accept on your behalf for your being with us in this development journey with our people.

Each step of this journey I dedicate to the 33 friends I lost in that struggle for freedom of the 1970s. They might be victims of misleadership and a flawed ideology, but I respect their tenacity and sacrifices in reaching the poor “wherever they are to be found.”

Indeed, let’s move on. ‪#‎Pestelosrappleraward

TWO LONG BRIDGES OF HELPING HANDS

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

TWO LONG BRIDGES OF HELPING HANDS

The current week has been quite generous to us. Instead of one, two bridges of helping hands materialized to lead us to two fervently hoped-for milestones: a drug rehabilitation center in Bohol, and the possibility to win the Rappler.com award which can give a big boost to our usual advocacies on pro-poor development in our province.

On the first bridge, it came as a surprise. After six months of intensive consultations, internet-based research and actual visits to drug rehab centers in the Visayas and Mindanao, our trustees at the Bohol Local Development Foundation, decided in June, it was time to take a breather. After all, we provided all our findings and proposals, seven in all, to the Government and the Church, as well as key individuals and institutions, such as colleges and universities, especially those with psychology courses.

Our NGO decided we would just focus on what the program which replaced our post-quake house build project, the promotion of informal employment and sustainable employment among out-of-school youth and other marginalized groups. We were hoping that the Church and the Government which have relatively more resources would consider as top priority the establishment of a drug rehab center for a province with a population of 1.2 million and a growing army of drug abusers.

We resumed talk with potential partners when it became apparent neither institution was interested in building such facility. Meanwhile, more and more people are contacting us to inquire how we could help them put some family members on rehab. Each time we recommended to bring them to centers in Cebu or in Mindanao, there would be long silence or what seemed to us as gasping sound on the other end upon hearing about the fees required and other costs. The expenses would simply be beyond their reach.

The three-hour meeting last Wednesday that we had with officials of two rehab centers, one in Cebu, the FARM (Family and Recovery Management) Center and the other in Ozamis City, the It Works Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, achieved a breakthrough in this long, tedious journey to helping build such much-needed facility in Bohol.

BLDF brokered an agreement with the owners/managers of the two prestigious drug rehab centers to pool resources and help establish the first drug rehab center in the province. All the parties agreed that the main objective was to build such center to serve as hub for treatment and pre-treatment activities and that it should be run as business rather than as a charity project.

Rene Francisco and Jimmy Clemente, heads of It Works and FARM, respectively, would jointly form a legal entity to sign the agreement with the Pestelos family on the use of Balay Kahayag facilities.

The Pestelos family would lease its property at affordable costs and not take part in management so that the new legal entity could exercise full control of the drug rehab facility. BLDF, for its part, could play a part in community development and livelihood activities to generate support to the Center from target communities and groups

In addition, taking into account its existing partnership with Gardy Labad’s Kasing-Sining, BLDF will continue to liaise with cultural groups which can play a part in social preparation as well as serve as part of therapy interventions for clients of the center.

The contract will be signed between the parties as early as next week and redesigning of the Balay Kahayag into a rehab center will start soonest. The journey that has brought us to this point has been made easier by a bridge of helping hands composed of the following:

-the staff of the two partner drug rehab centers who made available their time and accounts of their experiences dealing with both hard and easy cases of drug addiction among the poor and rich alike;

-the medical and administrative staff of the other centers visited (New Day Recovery Center, Davao City; Metro Psyche or Roads and Bridges for Recovery, Mandaue City; Misamis Occidental Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation Center, Oroquieta City; Lifeline Services, Tangub City; New Day Recovery Center, Davao City) who gave their time to tell us about their experiences in operating their rehab centers;

-the Holy Name University, its president and the faculty of the social science department who assured us support to the center in terms of assigning volunteers from their students once the center is established;

-the police officers, local officials and other authorities in the LGUs who answered with all candor and honesty about the extent of drug addiction in each barangay and the common problems met in implementing laws against illegal drug use;

-some priests we interviewed who talked openly about their constraints in participating in the activities of the drug rehab center without proper authorization from the Bishop or without affecting programs previously agreed with parishioners or the lay organizations;

-retired academicians such as Prof. Corazon Jamero Logarta who travelled all the way from Garcia Hernandez to convey to us personally her support to the NGO’s advocacy to build a drug rehab center in the province;

-the “wounded healers,” former center clients who now serve practically all the centers visited as program directors, facilitators/counsellors and case managers, who shared with us freely their experiences in the centers where they were treated and how these helped them in their professional jobs in a drug rehab center;

-wives and mothers who told us about their need to seek counselling for their wives and children but could not do so on account of what was termed “social stigma” attached to drug addiction;

-the vast army of cultural workers that Bohol has which can turn a cockpit into a theatre!

This long bridge of support has led to the successful negotiations between two well-known drug rehab centers and the Pestelos family to turn Balay Kahayag into Bohol’s first drug rehabilitation center o serve hundreds of drug abuse victims waiting to be rescued.

The second bridge of helping hands led to the phenomenal increase in votes cast in my favor for the prestigious Rappler award where yours truly is among fifteen (15) finalists out of a total of 250 nominees.

As background to the Rappler Award, here is part of the letter sent to me on 18 August by Krista Garcia, content producer of Rappler, Inc.:

“On behalf of Rappler.com, I am pleased to inform you that you have been shortlisted as an ENTERPRISE MOVER finalist for the 2015 Move Awards! You were nominated by Jason Tulio.

“From over 250 entries, our esteemed panel selected 15 individuals who encapsulate the Move Ideal of action for change. In 2 weeks, the public will vote for you and the other finalists to determine who the final Mover is. We will publicly announce all finalists on September 2 through a microsite with a voting platform.”

Additional details are in these excerpts from a press release:

Nestor Pestelos, president of Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF), was among 15 finalists for the 2015 Move Awards of Rappler, the country’s first social news website “where stories inspire community engagement and digitally fueled actions for social change.

The Move Awards is Rappler’s initiative “to celebrate outstanding Filipinos who don’t let reality get in the way of their dreams: they look at the status quo and inspire others to change it with them for the better.

The finalists were selected out of more than 250 nominees by a panel which includes: Cheche Lazaro, journalist; Nix Nolledo, technology entrepreneur; Brillante MendCommissioner-at-Large for the National Youth Commission as well as founder of the Yes Pinoy Foundation,oza, filmmaker; Maria Ressa, former CNN bureau chief for Manila and Jakarta who founded Rappler in 2011; and Dingdong Nantes, GMA 7 star and concurrently Commissioner-at-Large for the National Youth Commission as well as founder of the Yes Pinoy Foundation.

The selection process features an interview and public voting via a microsite which started last September 2. The winners will be announced on September 26, after the Social Good Summit which will be held at the Newport Performing Arts Theater, Pasay City.

Rappler.com has this write-up about the nominee:

In October 2013, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Bohol, claiming billions of pesos in damage and displacing thousands of families. As the province struggled to rise from the rubble, non-governmental organizations such as the Bohol Local Development Foundation became crucial in expediting the process of rehabilitation and recovery. Led by its founding president Nestor Pestelos, BLDF implemented a community-based shelter assistance project to enable 150 families to build transitional core houses and move their vulnerable members to safer and more secure dwellings.

Since 2003, BLDF has been working hard to fulfill its mission of empowering local communities to be in control of their own development. Aside from providing funding channels for agricultural and social enterprise projects, Nestor has also helped establish ecotourism sites in deprived areas of Bohol, implemented a Literacy and Livelihood Project for Badjaos, and worked closely with the Bohol Provincial Planning and Development Office in developing a Poverty Database Monitoring System.

At 73, he shows no signs of slowing down. He aims to keep moving to translate his vision of a better world into concrete policies, plans and programs that will link local communities with the government and other institutions.

From a 3% score, while the first placer and second plaeer were scoring more than 50% and 40%, respectively, in the public poll a few days after the start on 02 September, our score soared to what it was this morning, at 40%, which equals the first placer, while the second placer is at 20%.

Undoubtedly there is a long, long bridge of support to achieve such phenomenal performance in the public poll for the Rapler.com award. The votes have been coming across countries, from my high school and college classmates, all forms of organizations I have been part of, local governments and international organizations, from relatives from various countries, from families of friends and those I have worked with in projects in more than a dozen countries.

It will be impossible for me to list all the names and thank everyone for this massive show of support. This award, a key milestone which may result from this long bridge of support, is actually related to the dream of having a drug rehabilitation center in Bohol.

These two long bridges of helping hands are actually proof that despite what the cynics and pessimists say, the men and women of goodwill of diverse cultures and beliefs will find a way to support a good cause and contribute their share towards building a better world for us all.

Note: Deadline for voting for the Rappler award is midnight of 20 September. To vote, click this link: http://www.rappler.com/move-candidates?campaign_id=1&category_id=4

#Votepestelosrappler

NMP/18 Sep 2015/4.48 p.m.

DECLUTTERING DEVELOPMENT

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Now that the world is about to embark on a journey to achieve milestones under the banner of Sustainable Development Goals, the question foremost in the minds of many people in Bohol is how do we best prepare for the new global agenda to get the most benefits from it. In our view, the first step is to declutter the development landscape and do away resolutely with slogans, frameworks and so-called empowerment tools which will weigh us down rather than help us pursue, say SDG No. 1 – End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

This begs the question that we know with a degree of accuracy which prescription or technical advice works and does not work to help us bring down poverty incidence in our province. Hence, we must first focus on our situation, get the lessons right from previous plans and projects and determine the approaches, strategies and tools that can best address local poverty and its attendant ills, malnutrition, infant mortality, illiteracy, unemployment, to name a few, with focus on the most marginalized and disadvantaged among the people,  in ways that also protect the environment, foster economic growth  and further enhance local culture and values.

 Quite a mouthful, doubtless an effect of donor-powered inputs, but is this not what sustainability mean in the end?

If we cut through the verbiage, the pursuit of the SDGs, as far as Goal No. 1 is concerned, will require that we know - pause for breath - who are the poor; what are their priority needs; where they are located; which services are already reaching them; what are their sources of livelihood; and how can we help them sustain and improve their income sources to enable them “to liberate themselves from the constraints of underdevelopment.”

This last phrase has been our favorite for decades. We have cited it in countless proposals as part of efforts to squeeze grants from external donors. Just an aside: we have been doing these proposals for more than half a lifetime along with other project planners the world over hoping we can contribute to pro-poor development on this our planet gradually being diminished by all kinds of violence, ecological abuse and on the whole, by bad governance in most nation-states. And yes, in most cases, we all end up a victim by projects badly planned and implemented.

In the final analysis, efforts to localize the SDGs and benefit local communities and households will be through projects expected to be relevant to the lives of the people. These projects are supposedly created by supportive policies and relevant plans resulting in adequate administrative and funding support that will make possible effective multi-level governance.

This collaborative process starts necessarily with a common database which functions as baseline to serve as initial basis for identifying policy gaps and prioritizing interventions to identified problems. Later, it serves to establish the impact of such interventions to the actual situation of households and local communities.

With 17 goals and 169 targets, and presumably hundreds of indicators for both progress and impact monitoring, the new global development agenda will run the risk of overwhelming local government units and their partner NGOs and People’s Organizations with requirements to conduct surveys at community and household levels for activities undertaken in support of each of the 17 SDGs. The world will do nothing but conduct surveys!

As early as this stage, technical inputs are needed from the National Government through the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) to provide timely guidelines on how to facilitate database building in support of the new development agenda which advocates for localization in the pursuit of each of the 17 SDGs.

Let me repeat here what localization means according to a UN Report on this issue:

“Localization refers to the process of defining, implementing and monitoring strategies at the local level for achieving global, national and subnational sustainable development goals and targets. This involves concrete mechanisms, tools, innovations, platforms and processes to effectively translate the development agenda into results at the local level.

“The concept should therefore be understood holistically, beyond the institutions

of local governments, to include all local actors through a territorial approach that includes civil

society, traditional leaders, religious organizations, academia, the private sector and others. We firmly believe, however, that a strong and capable local government provides the fundamental leadership role to bring local stakeholders together.”

As I noted in a previous column, lessons could be learned from localizing the MDGs done in Bohol where a project on localization was implemented in 2005 or five years after the launch of the MDGs. The project was carried out by the Action for Economic Reforms (AER) in partnership with PROCESS Bohol, the Provincial Government of Bohol, Social Watch, La Aldea, and Novib, a Dutch NGO.

European Union provided the funding, The project was implemented in the municipalities of Tubigon, Bilar and Jagna. NEDA Director Erlinda M. Capones said in her message published in the project report, Making a Difference, Localized Monitoring System on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), The Bohol Experience:

“The essence of localizing the MDGs is to build ownership and empower people to better articulate their local needs under the umbrella of an internationally agreed development agenda. Involving the local government, civil society organizations and donors provides a solid basis for sustainable dialogue and a broad-based ‘constituency of support’ for greater policy coherence, resource mobilization, and capacity building. This process of localization will respond to the inherent danger that even if the targets are achieved, the inequalities within a nation across people and places would still persist.”

Her idea reflects basically the same thought expressed by current advocates for the localization of the SDGs, the global agenda for the next 15 years starting in January, 2016:

“Building upon the successes of many localized sustainable development initiatives, the progress towards the MDGs will be determined first and foremost by progress at the local level. In this regard, local actors will need national and global support to develop and strengthen their capacities and generate resources to realizing the MDGs…”

The organizers of the activity hope that the Bohol experience, in localizing the MDGscould be replicated in Tagbilaran City and the other municipalities aside from Tubigon, Bilar and Jagna. For his part, AER Coordinator Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III says: “Our best hope, grand ambition it may be, is to see Bohol’s experience replicated across the country.”

Well, to our dismay probably, neither expectations happened. I believe that this non-event should be the starting point in devising strategies for the localization of the next global development agenda. I have proposed in a previous column that the academe in Bohol, take an active hand in reviewing previous experiences in localizing the MDGs and systematically draw lessons for doing the same for the SDGs.

One area of interest will be the use of several tools at local level to establish the MDG database: DevInfo, Bohol Info, Local Poverty Action Plan (LPRAP) or its advance version Poverty Database Monitoring System (PDMS), MDG Planning Matrix Software, AER MDG Open Source GIS Toolkit.

Later, outside this localization project, DILG promoted the use of the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) while DSWD had its National Household Targeting System (NHTS) both used to establish poverty databases at municipal and local community levels.

I recommend that the academe in Bohol take an active part in this proposed assessment of database tools used at local levels as initial activity for the localization of the SDGs. Of all the institutions here in Bohol, these universities and colleges have the potential to be objective (read: politically neutral) in doing the review of the poverty planning and monitoring tools. They can eventually assume the role of overseeing how the harmonized tools can be used by the Local Government Units, CSOs and all those involved in the planning, implementation and monitoring the SDGs.

The academe can collectively establish an Institute of Governance, Development and Culture to ensure periodic and systematic decluttering of development advocacies and tools and thus achieve the often elusive continuity of policies, plans and programs in support of an international development agenda. Then we can proceed to build a case to get a significant share from the UN allocations if we succeed to show that the project concept will be pertinent to Bohol and other provinces in the country.

This idea was first thought of years ago upon the retirement of Atty. Nitz Cambangay from PPDO. He was serving concurrently as BLDF Vice Chair and shared our vision to establish an entity that could address the lack of sustainability in plans and programs for which vast resources are spent by the Government and its development partners from year to year, from one development decade to another.

When he passed away, the dream vanished with him. Let’s see if we can get support to revive the idea in this era of the SDGs. For comments, email: npestelos@gmail.com  #SDGsbohol

NMP/02 Sep 2015/7.36 p.m.