Practical and Appropriate Community Development

The country's economists and political leaders, especially those who belong to the Aquino administration, are quite ecstatic about the 6.6% growth of the economy last year. There are those however who think that this is not enough; they say the benefits from this growth do not filter to local communities and needy households. Yesterday, a political leader said many people still depend on loan sharks, those who charge excessive interest, to get funding for their livelihood projects. He said this indicate that so-called economic growth does not translate into actual benefits for the people in local communities.

For his part, Pres. Aquino has taken note of what critics from the Opposition calls "jobless economic growth." The economy may improve but it does not lead to an  increase in job opportunities because the growth is in sectors which do not need significant job creation to grow.  To be sure, the private sector will not create jobs just to be able to provide employment for the poor. Job creation for their part is linked to a company's pursuit of its commercial objective and the Government is expected to formulate policies that will enable participation of the private sector in the initiation and development of businesses which will require more people to get employed.

In a developing country like the Philippines, where population rate outpaces economic growth, no amount of economic growth will be enough to give jobs to all those who are employed and underemployed. Hence, we again fall back to the old realization that to be able to make a dent on poverty, we must not only try to do something about the galloping population rate, but do something about helping people find jobs and for government to improve the outreach of basic services.

For job creation, we need not limit ourselves to the formal sectors. There is a need to go to the informal sectors, the enterprises traditionally engaged in by local communities and households, and try to further scale them up through improved technology, more effective linkage to market, and more efficient production system. Unfortunately, the so-called capacity-building programs undertaken by government agencies do not first look into what are existing in local communities and help develop them. Extension workers and trainers are just so enamored with powerpoint presentations and presenting them as their contents or messages are gospel truths. The training participants who are enticed to attend such training with free food and accommodation learn very little of value from such kind of training.

Delivery of basic services by the government suffer from the same mindless pursuit of ineffective strategies, more of showbiz stuff or "paculo," like enticing people from rural villages to come down to the poblacion or town center to be able to partake of government services. And this is done once a year! In fairness, this is good for awareness building, on making people know which services are available, but such annual activities should not be a substitute for more effective system to deliver services to households who live beyond 7 kilometers from the town center.

We must go back to the old-fashioned community development approach of starting where the people are, improving what they have, and truly building on their existing assets and skills. Specialists are needed to assist government extension staff and NGO fieldworkers on how to do basic social investigation, community diagnosis, mobilization of community volunteers, community organizing work and linking organized communities both for livelihood development and the provision of basic services with a bias to those who are more disadvantaged than others.

Let us go back to the old PACD but rather than have the old much-maligned Presidential Assistant for Community Development, let us all work together for Practical and Appropriate Community Development.
We must go beyond showbiz stuff in dealing with our own people.

Public-Private Partnership as Strategy to Improve Local Governance

For this year's Valentines Day, we visited La Libertad, a village here in Baclayon, Bohol. This time, we did not spend time talking with a neighborhood with pronounced social disparities. We went to the Baclayon Homestead Farm and visited a lake with potential as a good tour destination.

Both could benefit the poor in La Libertad. If developed as a training and demonstration center, the farm owned by the Medfords could be an institutional asset to improve the skills level of farmers in producing organic food products. The Loyola Lake, on  the other hand, could attract local and foreign tourists and stimulate the local economy in the process that will benefit the families who live near the lake and, possibly, all the rest of the households in the village community.

This visit to La Libertad has set me to thinking again about the vast possibilities of using what has been known as the PPP or Public-Private Partnership in developing community assets as part of poverty reduction efforts at municipal or city level. In all my years as development professional which has spanned four decades in several countries in Asia and the Pacific, I believe that the built-in inefficiency of local governments can be upset with the fiscal discipline and business focus that the private sector can bring into projects designed to benefit households and local communities in ways that also earn profit for the investors.

Baclayon offers a great opportunity at this time to demonstrate how the PPP can be made to work to make local governments more effective. Its 5-year Community-Based Eco-cultural Tourism Plan has been approved by the LGU, which has also given the nod to the strategy to involve primarily the private sector in implementing the priority projects identified by the plan.

The private sector in the municipality is fully represented in the newly-organized Baclayon Entrepreneurs Association (BEA) which ensures a mechanism for the the maximum participation of the sector. The management of business firms, such as the Peacock Garden, has shown keen interest in the new concept about the involvement of hotels in community development work as practised by some hotels in Cambodia.

Most of the political leaders have seen the wisdom of having the PPP as a strategy to address problems of inefficiency, lack of motivation, inadequate staff and funding which constitute formidable constraints to effective governance over the years.

Indeed it is time to achieve a breakthrough in governance through adoption of the PPP in the planning and implementation of projects.

Lessons for BLDF

Our last posting was 02 Dec, more than two months ago. I am tempted to say "Sorry to All," but it may not be appropriate. Not too many people visit our BLDF posts and there is no indication from the few who do that they have missed my posts. It will be quite a distraction, if not a source of humor at my expense, if I apologize for something that is not too important anyway to people.

But, still, my apologies to all, more of courtesy, than contrition.

Anyway, two months have passed too quickly. Too many things have absorbed my attention - BLDF-related matters among them. I will deal on what we have gone through regarding BLDF.

First, it has to be stated that unlike most NGOs, BLDF states explicitly in its by-laws that one of its objectives is to work closely with the Provincial Government  or LGUs in initiatives to improve the planning, implementation and monitoring of poverty reduction projects. After ten years, it has persevered in pursuing this objective. We have spent the most part of the period prior to the board meeting in January in doing formal and informal assessment on our experiences regarding this objective.

Among the lessons learned are as follows:

-We need to set a standard of behaviour in working with Government. Most of the time, LGUs and government agencies perceive us to be a charitable organization. Hence, they treat us depending on what they think they can get from us in terms of grants. We need to manage their perception so that they can view us as equal partner in development.

-This microfinance component needs to be studied seriously. We always run into difficulties to the extent that we end up paying for the loans that our clients fail to pay back due to  a variety of reasons. The reports that we read from other sources of microfinance are just too good to be true. They must know something we do not know, although we have done everything according to the book. The inability to pay back loans is influenced by factors beyond the control of any project. Others are either lying or they must be using collection techniques that are not in the books.

-Some people think BLDF is in the business of selling the PDMS software. We have had ten years of field-testing and modifying it with major technical contributions from Tony Irving, a British national initially recruited as VSO. He was the one who designed and developed the software from the time it was still LPRAP to these days of Version 3.0. The PDMS survey methodology and software have been adopted in other municipalities and cities in the Philippines and in a few areas outside the country. Still, people misunderstand us.

-We need more effective means to make people realize BLDF, which owns the copyright to the software, is not selling the software. It only allows clients to use it. The token fee that is paid by clients goes to further developing the software which also benefits them in the end. Again, we must stress this, it's not all a matter of installing the software. Client LGUs need to use or modify the survey based on their situation. There is a whole process involved from the survey to the installation of the software and to the use of the household database in local-level planning.

-During the last ten years, PDMS has been used by several externally-funded projects in Bohol. No project money has been used for the software. Token fees were paid for by the LGUs. While the LGUs pay the reimbursements, a few client LGUs take 1 to 2 years to pay for these fees and reimbursements of survey and data encoding expenses. Hence, this partnership with LGUs regarding the software is more of a financial burden to BLDF.


-In Maa, Davao City, the LPRAP software installed by Tony Irving and his counterpart, Arnold Seloterio, in 2007, is still used to track progress of families living in garbage dumps. All of the families have received assistance from the local parish. Significant gains have been achieved by most of the poorest families to improve their lot. By the time Fr. Cenon left the parish late last year, the use of the LPRAP software has been expanded to five barangays. They are still using the same old software version and those who were trained as field interviewers are now serving as trainers and community organizers to the new volunteers. It shows you do not need the latest software to really track who need assistance most and to see their progress over the years. It shows also we need not confine ourselves to LGUs as partners in the use of a poverty database in pro-poor service delivery.

-Over the years, we have given briefing on PDMS to the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC). Now we hear NAPC is implementing a project in 28 out of 48 LGUs. It is not clear whether its project will involve the use of a poverty software. We have not received word from any of the government partners on whether PDMS will be used in NAPC areas and in the rest of Bohol. DILG and DSWD seem to be promoting their respective survey and software tools for the use of the province. Despite the 10-year history of PDMS use in the province, nobody has contacted BLDF on how PDMS can still be used officially by LGUs. The lesson is for BLDF to look for other partners in the use of its PDMS methodology and software.

-During its last meeting of the Board of Trustees, it was decided that on account of new challenges, another reorganization be undertaken. The Trustees approved in principle the proposal that those above 60 will move to compose the membership of an Advisory Council and the rest to form the nucleus of a new Board and that younger members be invited. This proposal will require further study. Rather than reorganization, what is more important is a harder look at the strategies it has adopted over the years and to decide on its "core business" for the next five years.

These are some of the thinking going on with BLDF as it enters the new year. It will be interesting to exchange notes with other NGOs, on how they have managed to survive, and what is their outlook regarding the future of their own NGO or NGOs in general.

Let's find out what happens next.