THE BOHOL WE WANT

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

The start of the year is a good time to take a hard look at our current situation and see how we can move forward to have the province we have always wanted in recent years.

As local papers have reported it, based on official government reports, 70% of crimes in the province are drug-related and that Bohol has become a major transshipment point for illegal drugs. Hence, we would like to see a drug-free Bohol and that something is done to rehabilitate the growing number of drug addicts primarily among the youth.

Crimes against property and persons are on the rise and gory crimes unheard of before have been the subject of page one news stories in local pictures complete with pictures of victims and suspects. We want the old Bohol of several years ago where the crime rate is almost zero.

Street children and beggars are practically in all  rapidly-urbanizing communities with many of them asking for alms around the church, malls and parking lots. We want a province where disadvantaged groups are attended to and provided assistance by mandated agencies which have budget for this social concern. Well, we want a beggar-free Bohol.

Prostitution seems to be on the rise with many young girls in scanty clothing accompanying aging foreign-looking tourists. Human trafficking may be on the rise. We want a province which can have all forms of human trafficking determined and put under control, if not totally eliminated. We want a province not complacent about the issue in a subconscious or deliberate effort to look the other way for the sake of achieving economic growth through tourism.

Accusations of corruption have been levelled against political leaders who are in power by some aspiring politicians for almost a year. We want to see a Bohol where politicians are mature enough to facilitate quick resolution of issues or a province which can usher in a new era of mature political dialogues rather than what amounts to as rumor-mongering. This erodes public confidence in governance given all these media stories about PDAP, DAP and other forms of alleged corruption in high places.

Delivery of services through HEAT (Health, Economic, Agriculture, Tourism) Caravans have been carried out regularly in capital towns where services are made available to the people. Those who are from remote barangays, those communities located more than seven (7) kms. from the town centers, may not be reached by such service modality. We would like a return to old-fashioned community development efforts in Bohol in which trained and experienced extension workers are fielded to remote areas in a municipality to facilitate the delivery of much-needed services to the neediest segments of the population.

Agricultural products, such as vegetables, fruits, meat products, are reportedly imported from other provinces which account for the high prices of these goods. We want a Bohol self-sufficient in food products and able to market excess products to the rest of the region or to other regions. We want a Bohol where idle are systematically identified and put to productive use.

Information on basic development indicators, such as child malnutrition, infant mortality, maternal mortality, unemployment, drop-out rates, agricultural production, etc.  is not readily available at local government level to guide  planning, implementation and monitoring. We want a return to the old practice in Bohol where a common database existed at municipal and barangay levels and used as basis for identifying projects preparatory to detailed planning and implementation.

There seems to be a disconnect with what Pope Francis and the pronouncements and practices of the dominant Church. Local sermons are more for spiritualizing the faith rather than part of an active engagement with matters reflecting a pro-poor bias in keeping with the teachings of the Messiah. We hope to see in Bohol more social involvement of the faithful in addressing poverty and raising awareness about environmental concerns rather than organizing social functions commemorating anniversaries. Let us return to the Old Bohol where priests are a source of moral guidance especially during times of crises.

Academic institutions, such as colleges and universities, seem to have lost their social relevance by lack of direction in their extension and development work. We would like to see more active involvement of such institutions in grassroots development, specifically in documenting issues related to local poverty and climate change and serve as objective evaluator and documentor of project experiences at household and community level to enable them to influence the direction of local planning and implementation.

The NGO community has become merely an extension of government functions rather than an active cooperating partner in development work. This does not mean playing an adversary role to Government. We want a province where NGOs or Civil Society Organizations “take advantage of opportunities left behind by massive Government and donor efforts,” as we used to say it during the heyday of the NGOs in the 1980s.

I must stop here and give the readers a chance to say what is the Bohol they want. For feedbacks, email me at npestelos@gmail.com #Boholwewant

NMP/1 Jan 2016/12.37 p.m.

SPIRITUAL VALUES IN THE WORK PLACE

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS                                                       

In my research on spirituality and organizations, I chanced upon a book, The New Bottom Line: Bringing Heart and Soul to Business, co-edited by John Renesch, an authority on transformative leadership, and Bill DeFoore, described as an author, psychotherapist, consultant and president of the Institute for Personal and Professional Development.

The book is actually a compilation of articles about spiritual values (not to be confused with religion) and the world of commerce. For this week’s column, I have taken notes on lessons and insights which can be useful in thinking about spiritual values both in business and development work.

The Foreword says that the book, rather than focus on individual spirituality, offers instead “new insights on what constitutes a spiritual workplace and what it can mean both for individuals and corporations in terms of fulfillment and accomplishment.”

Its Preface notes that “the study of larger philosophic issues involving the universe, human destiny and creative futures has been encroaching on the business community for the past several years.” Starting in the 1990s, organizational development theory and related disciplines have been invading, as it were, traditional business circles.

The Introduction, written by the co-editors, states that over the last two hundred and fifty years, materialism-based capitalism has become the dominant force in society, particularly in the industrialized world. It notes that in the mid-1700s, “society was presumed to be a moral, compassionate and relatively frugal marketplace, dependent on much less efficient means of production than the present day.”

In those days, business was presumed “to have a conscience and, even if it didn’t, there was limited negative effect it could have on the rest of society.” Travel and communication took months or years. Manufacturing was considered a craftsman’s art.

Over the past couple of centuries, however, “the Industrial Age has created a huge production-consumption system that is so complex, so vast, that it finds itself pulling all the industrialized world along its tracks.”

This system has become insatiable: “It has become an engine – a machine- that has only one goal: to produce the most profit for the owners of the enterprises of commerce. That is what it does best.” The Introduction quotes Roger Terry, author of Economic Insanity:

“Capitalism no matter whose model you like, requires a constantly expanding market, requires that luxuries become necessities, that we constantly improve and replace products in an endless upward spiral, that we extract an increasing amount of profit, and that we infuse new money regularly into the economic flow. Everyone agrees on this. These are the assumptions behind everyone’s solutions. No one questions the insanity of the system at its most fundamental levels.”

Industrialization requires people to think and act more like machines. The human spirit faces extinction. This phenomenon has been referred to as spiritual bankruptcy.  “It is the result of a loss of meaning in our lives and in our work,” the co-editors Renesch and DeFoore further assert in the Introduction to this landmark anthology, which further observes:

“As these two models overlap – consciousness and commerce – a new bottom line is being born. This new bottom line puts people and nature ahead of profits. It is not anti-business, nor against profit-making. However, some may see this kind of shift in priorities as a threat – a threat to the system that has become so powerful that nothing has been able to slow it down so far.”

Amidst the growing disparity between the “haves” and “have-nots” in the US and the world, “the human spirit reminds our consciousness of our humanness – of our rootedness as spiritual beings. The new bottom live values meaning, diversity, integrity, caring, service, community, connectedness, creativity, intuition, balance and grace. It challenges the old bottom line values of toughness, wealth-amassing for its own sake, stress, domination, control and individual heroes.”

The rest of the 350-page hardbound edition of the book presents the views and insights of 30 contributors who have explained and documented in the process this emerging trend to reflect spiritual values in the market-place, in the world of business and mega capitalism.

Let’s try to pick some gems from this valuable collection of insights and lessons on spiritual values in the work-place:

In business, energy comes from many different sources familiar to most us – ambition, the many forms of security, recognition, self-satisfaction, and completion.  Spirituality or adherence to spiritual values is a “lesser understood source,” which is not to be equated with the promotion of specific religions in the work-place. In a Workplace Values Survey done in the US, a majority of those surveyed “acknowledged some form of spiritual ritual – prayer, meditation, or services of some kind.

A remarkable fifty-five percent claimed to have experienced ‘personal transformation,’ or epiphany of some sort, mostly in the past five years.”  This indicates a hunger for spiritual values in the work-place.

On the subject of business spirituality, the article quotes this passage from a book co-edited by Renesch and Bill DeFoore: “To us, ‘business spirituality,’ may sound like an oxymoron, but if the ancient insight that business has its own divine patronage is difficult for us to comprehend, it only shows us how far we have moved away from religion. Business has found meaning and relevance to us as individuals and as a society, more profound than a secular mind might be capable of imagining.”

The book further asserts: “The relationship between business and community whether local or global, is so serious as to touch upon ultimate values. The business person who seeks only to exploit the relationship for personal gains fails to perceive theological roots of business, the fact that business is deeply involved in matters of ultimate meaning. Ethics in business is not a tangential concern, but speaks to the very heart of business life.”

Here is what the book says on profit: “Sometimes when I speak to business people about the soul in their work, they ask anxiously about profit, the bottom line. If we make profit the ultimate concern of our work, then the soul has no recourse but to appear in negative ways – as low morale, symptoms among workers, conflict society and even poor quality of products.”

Renesch further says in this article on Spirity & Work : “Spiritual values, intuition, community, openness, trust, love and caring, reflection, holistic or systems thinking – these ideals are bridging gaps that have grown wider over the past couple of centuries. As bridges, they will help us reunite with those parts of ourselves that we have kept separate so we can begin to bring all of ourselves to work everyday. When this integration occuse, we find renewed passion and meaning in our work.”

The contributors in this book are talking about spiritual values in the work-place, with focus on business enterprises, but their insights may help us in our reflection on how spiritual values can reinvigorate our development work. This is to say that development planners and implementors may consider how infusion of spirituality may also succeed to enhance the sustainability of projects. It may infuse added energy in undertaking activities and link more effectively the work of project planners to not only to the hearts and minds of the poor, but to their soul as well.

While reading the book, half of brain was thinking about this darkness that continues to hover over us as a country, the greed and indifference of our political leaders and the elite classes. The forthcoming political exercise provides as an opportunity to instill spirituality in our businesses and development work that we may find the courage to fight evil wherever it manifests itself to obstruct the divine spirit in all of us.

We must build strong work teams and organizations with core spiritual values. In his article, The Spirit of Team, Barry Heermann, writes:

“Modern organizations stand at the edge of an abyss. Never before has change pressed in so unmercifully: from rapidly changing markets, doing more with less, multicultural business contexts and downsizing to constantly changing technologies. Simultaneously, organization stakeholders are expecting and demanding effective response to the upheavals of the day: from the environmental crisis, the breakdown of the family, and the widening gap between rich and poor to a multitude of stresses in modern life. A fundamental shift in organizational capacity and capability must be brought forth.”

That shift will require affirming spiritual values in the work-place, business and development work, as articulated in a speech by Vaclav Havel, president of Czechoslovakia:

“Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe towards which this world is headed – be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization – will be unavoidable… The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.”

Indeed spirituality in the work-place is needed. Now I rest my case. #Spiritualityinbusines

NMP/19 Dec 2015/5.30 a.m. 

PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Every time Christmas comes around, I remember my maternal Grandmother. She took care of myself and my younger Sister while Mother worked in a desiccated coconut factory in a nearby town all through our childhood  and adolescent years. How she would prepare us for Christmas day made up a large part of what I remember of those early years.

First, she made sure that poor as the family was, we would have something new – new pair of shoes, clothes, as it was the case with other families in our barangay. Christmas is the time when family members ought to have something new. Whoever started that tradition was a marketing expert. With the chilly air of the season, the Christmas songs filling the air, and the gift-giving parties in schools, offices and localities, we all ended up as willing victims of marketing in preparing for this celebration of our faith.

I recall our Inay Tanda – that’s how we call our grandmother, accompanying us to our relatives both in my father’s  and mother’s sides one after  another on Christmas and the days before the New Year.

All through our high school years, the routine remained practically the same, preparing for these visits by buying something new to wear, visiting relatives and receiving cash gifts from them which would usually compensate for the amount spent for the new items that Inay Tanda would buy for us.

Indeed preparing for Christmas was much, much simpler when we were younger.

 Life has become complicated in succeeding decades and, at first glance, with all the elaborate decorations in the homes, offices and in the streets, families and local communities have missed out seemingly on the simple message of Christmas – to rediscover our affinity with Him who was born in a manger.

Our faith is anchored on this hope for redemption, something we can realize by doing good for ourselves and our neighbors through deeds which reaffirm our common humanity as defined by enduring values during our temporal existence here on Earth.

Sounds a mouthful, but I have come to believe that the best way to prepare for Christmas is to be alone with oneself for at least one or two days and do some meditation not only how personal and family goals have been met , but how we have tried to help those who are in need.

It is almost Messianic, but this is the only way we can reaffirm our common bond with the rest of humankind especially with those who are more burdened than others.

How can we be a person for others while we pursue goals specifically for ourselves and our immediate family? This is the key question that we need to ask during meditation. Caring for others, especially the poor, is quite a difficult task . It requires vast investment in time and money that otherwise will be used for personal pursuits. In this sense, helping others will mean quite a sacrifice on the part of the person or a group.

In the essay on “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson, guru of Transcendentalism, had this to say on this matter:

“Do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I gave such men do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which they now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; - though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is  wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.”

This is an extreme option to take but some people prefer this based on the Darwinian principle that only the fittest survive and those who are “helpless are and ought to be doomed to extinction.” 

 Which is, of course, contrary to the belief of most religions.

To most people, the ability to help is not a philosophical question. Nor it is a question of motives behind the gesture of helping that by-standers delight in speculating. Whatever the motives as long as the service is delivered to the intended beneficiary is commendable in itself.

 More often it is question of finding the time and other resources to help that is the primary concern.  Unless one belongs to an organization that is financially endowed and capable of mobilizing paid staff to facilitate delivery of much-needed services, it will always be a competition for time, money and other resources between personal and social goals.

 Having social enterprises is a worthwhile strategy to pursue for some development organizations. They earn profit from their businesses which enables them to avoid extinction, but they also manage to pursue development objectives in terms of actual service delivery to specific disadvantaged groups or provide skills and employment to families in need.

In preparation for Christmas, a season for cleansing one’s soul of multiple sins, e.g., self-conceit and arrogance, I will try to resolve through meditation some of these issues related to the survival of local organizations, specifically those pursuing self-help initiatives among disadvantaged groups.

I would like to explore more deeply this practice of  sharing personal experiences which I have seen in all organizations of varied persuasions: from the Legion of Mary in my adolescent years, to the Nationalist Corps and like-minded organizations from the political left in those exciting days on the campus, to all sorts of religious or faith-based organizations, including those affiliated with Habitat for Humanity International, in meetings of Narcotics Anonymous I was invited to observe, and now with the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP). Indeed all religions are correct in the pursuit of self-transformation goals.

I have just finished a three-month orientation course and I was amazed at how virtual strangers would share their experiences in their own families, the problems they encountered and how they were able to overcome constraints through application of spiritual values. Outside this particular organizational context, it would be embarrassing to tell stories about family quarrels, marital infidelity, addiction to gambling, a personal quest for meaning and salvation, but for the first time in my life, I was hearing their stories of human frailties and the heroic struggle to overcome these with courage , the help of family and friends, and the guidance of  a Higher Being “who was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us,” or conceptualized in so many ways by so many creeds and religions through the ages.

Now I must go back to this meditation mode the week before Christmas and, hopefully, gain insights on what has eluded us through forty years of professional community development work – a network of people’s organizations able to decide on their own to create a powerful social force that we may have this sought-after kingdom of equality, justice and prosperity for all.

Spirituality or adherence to common human values has been the missing link through all the past efforts and sacrifices of development professionals and workers we have had the privilege and honor of working with in the past. Now a new journey begins as we prepare for this blessed season. #Development+spiritualvalues

How to Support Bohol's First Drug Rehab Center

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Now that Bohol’s first drug rehabilitation center is about to operate this month, it may be good to talk about how we can support it. Rene Francisco, CEO of the FITWBK (Farm It Works Balay Kahayag) Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, arrived the other day with the technical and administrative staff to finalize and implement plans to renovate and equip the facility and have everything in place in accordance with existing guidelines.

By this time, the Municipal LGU of Baclayon and the barangay councils within the immediate catchment area (barangays Laya, Montana and Cambanac) have been oriented on the policies and procedures of the Center. Once it is ready for full operations, the newly-formed staff from the partners, Family and Recovery Management Center from Minglanilla, Cebu and the It Works Chemical Dependency Treatment Center, will formally invite representatives from the Provincial Government, the various agencies, faith-based and civil society organizations to formally open discussion for possible partnership.

The facility is located at the Balay Kahayag Training Center compound in Laya, Baclayon. A number of queries have been received on admission procedures and we have referred these to the executive staff composed of Rene Francisco, COO; Jimmy Clemente, CEO; and Alain Alino, Center Director.

Queries can be made with Director Alino at Mobile number 09173250252 or with the Administrative Officer, Martin Cinco at 09774506285 or at email raemartin-cinco@yahoo.com.

The Pestelos family, which owns the BK facilities that will be improved upon and used by FITWBK, and the Bohol Local Development Foundation, Inc. (BLDF) which has carried out intensive research and consultations on having a drug rehabilitation center in the province and undertaken liaison work with the two partner entities, are not part of the management nor of the administrative staff of the facility.

This is to enable the FITWBK to be managed as a business enterprise to ensure its financial sustainability. Its clients will be charged standard or regular fees. The management will exercise functions as befit a commercial entity to ensure financial viability for the enterprise.

Although a business concern, it will be run as a social enterprise, with its profit used to operate the business and the profit to be channeled to contribute to the objective of helping increase the access of drug abuse victims from among the youth to high-quality services offered by the FITWBK.

It has been agreed between BLDF and the FITWBK Management that for every ten (10) paying clients, an additional two (2) will be non-paying who will be recommended jointly by DSWD and BLDF as coming from indigent families. This number will still not be enough to cope with hundreds of young people who have become drug abusers in recent years, most of them from marginalized families who will not be able to pay for center fees although these are much lower than those charged in similar facilities outside the province.

This is a critical area needing support from the Government, private sector and civil society organizations. They may want to sponsor clients to the Center on a sharing basis with the individual families and the Center management. The latter has had experiences on such arrangement and it will conduct an information campaign on this vital aspect of its operations.

The other opportunity for supporting FITWBK is to help in addressing the tremendous demand expected of its services in a province where around 70% of reported crimes are drug-related. This is an area requiring determined action from both Government and civil society organizations.

Despite the presence of the FITWBK, which is still limited in its intake capacity in relation to the huge demand for pre-treatment or diagnostic and treatment services, we still need to have a more systematic approach to broaden access to such services.

A contact point is needed between a service facility and the families affected by drug abuse and pave the way for their drug-related problems to be systematically addressed. Some ways must be found to relieve FITWBK of some tasks related to this need so it can focus on the treatment aspect of its operations.

As I said in previous columns, almost fifty percent  in a 21-column run I did on the subject of drug addiction since early this year, we need to establish what is called Outreach and Drop-In Centers (ODICs) by the UN or Substance Abuse and Family Enhancement (SAFE) by other agencies. Whether called ODIC or SAFE, this facility has these common objectives:

a.       To provide early intervention services and counseling to drug addicts to prevent relapse;

b.      To provide motivation and counseling to the addicted persons, and co-dependents/family members to seek treatment;

c.       To involve the community and significant others to help the drug addicts and their families in their recovery journeys;

d.      To reach out and provide basic information, knowledge and literature to addicted persons who do not want to appear in the treatment center;

e.       To provide home-based treatment for those in remote areas, particularly women where treatment facilities are not available;

f.       To provide a place and encourage the meetings of the support groups for recovering persons and co-dependents;

g.      To facilitate vocational training, job placements, develop self-employment and income generating activities for recovering persons; and

h.      To help recovering persons to join mainstream society as productive citizens and continue their recovery journey successfully.

The activities undertaken in this facility are as follows:

1.      Outreach visits;

2.      Early intervention strategies such as pre-treatment counseling, home-based detoxification;

3.      Short-term outpatient or home-based treatment;

4.      Referrals to hospitals or drug treatment centers;

5.      Organization and conduct of education and training programs by professionals on drug awareness,

6.      Training of outreach support staff and volunteers,

7.      Skills training; and

8.      Encouraging family members to come to the centers for counseling.

In a previous column, we have put the details on the specifications and costing for such a vital facility. I still think the Church and faith-based organizations will be in a better position to initiate and manage it at this time as support to the drug rehabilitation center which will soon be operational but still with limited capacity to address all the needs brought about by this enormous drug addiction problem in our province.

The other support needed will be the organization of a Core Training and Operations Team (CTOT) composed of agencies and other entities with programs or projects which can be linked to drug prevention and rehabilitation.  As listed before in previous studies and proposals, this team may include: the Provincial Government of Bohol, the various LGUs preferable in those most affected by the drug abuse problem, Holy Name University and other academic institutions with psychology courses, Kasing-Sining Association, and representatives from the Church and other faith-based organizations.

This team will require intensive training on how to help implement the various initiatives related to supporting the drug rehabilitation center, the ODICs or outreach facilities that have been proposed to relieve the pressure off the pioneering facility, and to prepare for a more systematic collaborative efforts on the part of various sectors in carrying on the task of addressing the so-called drug menace in our province.

This team may have an inter-agency composition or it can be based in one agency or NGO and given the authority with counterparts from other entities. It will have to be trained and mobilized to produce the following outputs vital to this initial phase of an evolving Provincial Drug Abuse Prevention and Rehabilitation Assistance Program (DAPRAP):

-A systematic plan for doing community-based orientation and consultation activities in priority

areas agreed upon with FITWBK;

-A resource mobilization and fund raising campaign to be able to raise funds for a working

Secretariat and to implement key activities;

-A clear plan on how to raise funds to enable clients from indigent families gain access to the

services from the Center;

-A plan to generate support and participation from potential partners (LGUs/CSOs; Provincial

Government; Kasing Sining; Holy Name University; University of Bohol; BISU; and other

academic institutions; the Catholic church and other faith-based organizations; CSOs/NGOs;

corporations and the business sector;

-A plan for tapping support from the UN and international donors.

In a society such as Bohol which is known for families and constituencies with high

respect for authority, the initial steps to take in the fight against drug abuse will require a clear

call from the leadership at family and up the hierarchy of mandated and official governance. A

clear and persistent call from formal and informal leaders must now be heard not only about

arresting drug pushers but, more importantly, in making drug abuse victims undergo counselling

and a recovery process eventually.

I think most people in the province want a drug-free Bohol but they have not found a united voice to say it.  I sense that once the FITWBK and several outreach facilities are in place, the province shall be in a better and more effective position to launch a multi-sectoral approach to the drug addiction problem which now threatens the present and future of most families in our province.

Then it will be time for our leaders and people to talk about the Bohol they want. I am sure they will say, with few exceptions, they want a drug-free province.

 For comments, email npestelos@gmail.com

NMP/06 Nov. 2015/8.03 a.m. 

BEARERS OF HOPE

For The Bohol Tribune

In This Our Journey

NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS

Each time I walk around our project sites, mostly those where we have partnered with the Church and people’s organizations, as well as with local governments, in building transition core houses after the destructive earthquake two years ago, I become convinced more and more that what we need in our province and the country as a whole is hope, huge chunks of it, served with prayers and large helpings of projects, not mere slogans or rhetoric.

I am convinced that the families we assisted with transition core houses to help get them out of tents deserve to be listened to and somehow engaged in something for the long term to further nourish their newly-found hope for the future, their families and local communities and the country eventually.

I believe that the assistance given to the earthquake victims, mostly in the form of cement, plywood, nails and other construction materials, were actually investments not only in the building of temporary or permanent shelter, but in a more meaningful sense, they were actually investments in building hope among those rendered hopeless by a natural calamity beyond the control of the government, the Church or any other entity.

Hope is almost always the first casualty in a disaster, whether man-made or not. If we see it this way, then it becomes easier for us to persevere in our task to help people rebuild their homes We will believe that in doing so, we are actually putting in place the building blocks of something that our country seems to be in short supply these days – hope.

These were the thoughts swirling in my head when I, along with three others from our NGO, had a surprise visit to Angilan, Antequera where we had partnered with families who sought refuge in a chapel after the earthquake. The chapel eventually gave way due to the series of aftershocks and the old women and children of 17 families found shelter in a waiting shed while the menfolk made do with tents they themselves fashioned out of used tarpaulin and other materials.

Their liberation from the crammed waiting shed and makeshift shelter was a high point in the race against time barely two months after the disaster. Now, two years after the quake, a community has risen and their hope for a better life is made evident by the following:

-All 11 children or young people from this project site are all in school: college, 4; high school, 

4; and elementary, 3.

-All 7 carpenters from 15 families living in the main area of the project site are all employed in either the town or Tagbilaran City;

-Piped water is available from the municipal system on certain hours for which each family member contributes Php 10 per month;

-Electricity has reached the community, each family paying from Php 97 to Php 100 depending on usage;

-UNICEF through Catholic Relief Services has provided a toilet to each house built based on agreement between the latter and our NGO, Bohol Local Development Foundation (BLDF);

-Each of the families has entered into agreement with the landowner that Php 50 be paid monthly as rental or as contribution to the tax of the property per month over an initial five-month period with ten percent increase annually after which the rate will be negotiated with the landowner(s);

-The “dajong” or mutual aid societies giving aid for burial services has been revived this time with an expanded membership of 25 due to admission of families from the nearby puroks;

-The “dajong” has added another service, that of being source of micro-loans to members;

-Two families are making doormats out of coconut coir provided by a party list group;

-Two families are raising a pig each at the backyard as source of income to pay for school fees and other expenses after three to four months of caring for them;

-A family has been allowed by the landowner to till 1/4 ha. as ricefield out of the 25-hectare estate with one-third of harvest as his share.

-All 15 families in the main project site have built all kinds of extensions, such as porches, expanded kitchens, dining areas, salas indicating new aspirations following relative land security due to agreement with the landowner(s);

-Homeowners put up curtains, plant ornamentals around the house, hang up family photos, all indicating they have found a place they can call their home.

-The lone sari-sari or convenience store provides basic necessities without the families going to the town to buy them.

During the consultation after the visit to the houses, the representatives of families present said they would need some help to expand their pig raising project. This visit confirms earlier observation that after the house build, efforts must be exerted by the proponent agency or the partner NGO to go back to the partner families and explore ways and means to help families identify livelihood opportunities.

Most likely, they have already identified these opportunities and are doing their best to create products or offer services which will result to some cash income for the family. It’s not necessary that we ourselves become the source of livelihood ideas. In the case of the project site in Angilan, they seem to know what they want to further build the community out of  hope, faith in themselves and the Great Unseen.

We were about to go to the other project site in Pangangan , but I was reminded I had to go to the chapel in Dampas for my first confession since I left the church when I was fourteen years old. I did return to the fold and attended, I recall, one spiritual one-on-one retreat with a Jesuit priest, Fr. Cavan, at their retreat house in Cebu in 1987.

I recall I was not made to do any confession stuff. Instead, I was made to do the stations of the Cross alone on a hill and to say whatever I want to say at each stop  e.g. in anger, to question God, to shout or scream my heart out, whatever. For one hour, I took the journey and was astounded to find at the end of the last station, a trellis extending for almost fifteen meters full of bougainville flowers and I had to walk underneath it.

When I emerged, I remember being met by the glare of a bright sun at high noon. The Jesuit fathers must have planned it that way for me to realize hope awaits us at end of a bleak and chaotic journey of inner conflict and self-flagellation.

Along the way from the project visit in Angilan to observe the second anniversary of  the Magnitude 7.2 earthquake which hit our province two years ago to the confession and Mass in Dampas, I read again from my digital this advice from Pope Francis:

“To all of you, I repeat: Do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! Do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! And not only that, but I say to us all: let us not rob others of hope, let us become bearers of hope!” #BLDFwarrior

NMP/16 Apr 2015/6.45 p.m. 

MUCH THANKS TO ALL FOR THIS RAPLER 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.