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