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.