For The Bohol Tribune
In This Our Journey
by: NESTOR MANIEBO PESTELOS
I enjoy it immensely
when my friends joke I eat projects for breakfast. This is true figuratively,
of course. When I look back over the
last forty years after spending some brief time in military detention , which
ended a Bohemian cum revolutionary lifestyle, the latter more in form than in
substance, there has been a deliberate effort on my part to get involved in
projects rather than in activities which cannot be neatly categorized as
developmental.
Such effort is definitely
a better alternative than going behind prison walls and recycling fantasies
about the good life in some remote beaches in the company of friends and other
relations, many of whom are experts in prolonged stimulation of the senses. To
indulge in such fantasies is quite tiring and counterproductive and must be
resisted, some old comrades used to remind us. Shades of the proletarian
philosophy which got us into trouble with authorities in the first place!
Now at 73, I feel that I owe it to my children, to my colleagues, friends
and other relations to somehow make an accounting of key lessons learned from
some of these projects which have taken so much time away from efforts to enjoy
a normal family life despite our renouncing the irregular lifestyle of the
underground.
And so it came to pass that my first assignment as part of post-detention
rehabilitation was to serve as information officer of a high-profile project identified
with Mrs. Imelda Marcos, otherwise known as the First Lady, during the Martial
Law years. The project was Green Revolution which promoted at that time backyard
food production as intervention to child malnutrition.
A fraternity brother who visited me at the office, actually a more
friendly version of a detention center, found it significant that I would now
work in something green after being with the red underground. He saw it a
logical progression to enable me to appreciate projects of a different hue. Something
which earned my grin up to this day.
The positive thing about being a high-profile
project was that it ensured the involvement of many local government units and
government agencies in much-publicized activities such as Green Revolution
fairs, contests, free distribution of seeds and seedlings and gardens which
sprouted overnight in communities where the First Lady was about to speak or
where a Green Revolution caravan would pass.
In
terms of backyards made productive and gardens cultivated, the program under
the direction of no less than the First Lady was a huge success. All over the
land, there was a massive and quite expensive campaign to get the front yard,
backyard or any kind of home yard planted to all sorts of vegetables for family
consumption to eliminate child malnutrition or to sell surplus produce.
A huge surplus, yes. Great publicity, too,
about eggplants, squash, carrots, cabbages. Vegetables growing through your
ears but too much for a family to consume – or to sell. There was the finding
that it was cheaper to buy the vegetables in the nearest public market than to
produce and sell them Green Revolution style.
Our Green Revolution teams, with combined
membership of 35, composed mostly of retired community development fieldworkers
who pioneered the country’s PACD (Presidential Assistant for Community
Development) Program in the 1950s under Pres. Ramon Magsaysay, worked with a
graduate student of the University of the Philippines Los Banos to identify
vegetables under the category of
perennials which could be “planted, forgotten and harvested” rather than
follow the list of vegetables planted in rows favored by American Peace Corps
Volunteers.
They arrived at a list of much-favored
vegetables mandatory now for each team to promote which included the following:
sweet potato or camote, malunggay, banana, patani, sitao, seguidillas,
kangkong, alugbati, okra which could be
planted along any fence or even under the kitchen sink and would not require
any fertilizer or pesticide to grow. The vegetables in the list were easier to
promote on account of their low maintenance requirements and the impact to
family health and income easier to monitor and establish.
Hence, our Green Revolution staff had a guerilla-type
operations compared to the conventional deployment of battalions of extension
workers fielded by the Department of Agriculture in those days when the
Government was seeking ways to be more visible with its programs in the
countryside. Early in the 1970s, I learned the lesson that massive funding,
mobilization and a nationwide campaign will not guarantee relevance to the situation
of specific households in marginalized communities with low absorptive
capacities for large-scale projects.
After living almost like in a house arrest for
five years at the Green Revolution Command Center at Nayong Pilipino, I was
sent in the early 1980s on UNICEF scholarship to the Bangladesh Academy for
Rural Development in Comilla and the
Project Planning Center at the University of Bradford in England which refined
my understanding on the use of tools for the planning, implementation of rural
development projects. While about to enroll for a Master’s degree at the
University of Swansea, my boss, Atty. Ramon P. Binamira, instructed me to
return to the country and initiate the setting up of the Ilaw International
Center (IIC) in Bool, Tagbilaran City.
The IIC was able to sustain operations after
1989, when I left for UNDP posting in the Pacific and the Maldives) until 1993,
when its external funding ran out. There were many lessons learned during these
Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) years. Aside from the innovations in the conduct
of family Ilaw training which made use of emotions to complement technical
inputs in nutrition, family planning, food production and environmental
management, we learned that reliance on grants is not enough to sustain the
projects and implementing organization.
When the IIC group was succeeded by BLDF,
composed mostly of the former staff of the old NGO in 2003, it was about to
enter the Digital Age which put new challenges in project development work with
the use of digital gadgets and tools.
The primary lesson learned from this period,
from the IIC days to present-day BLDF is
that it is difficult for an NGO to survive with limited resources ,but it could still manage to survive at tremendous social and opportunity costs. In
partnership with the Provincial Government through various Administrations and the
PPDO, BLDF was able to develop new planning tools and approaches with
assistance from EU, CIDA, AusAID and USAID:
a. The Ilaw
ng Buhay (Light of Life) methodology and approach to community development
documented in several studies by academic institutions and international donors
recognized globally as an innovative application of basic services strategy by
the UNICEF Board;
b. Training
modules and community organizing approaches in unique geographic locations as
contrasted to areas defined by political boundaries, in the World Bank funded
Central Visayas Regional Development Project;
c. Child-based
concerns as entry points for community organizing in conflict areas, as in
those remote mountain areas under the influence and control of armed
anti-government elements in Bohol and other provinces considered as the
country’s poorest;
d. Use of
local resource base for catalyzing partnership between local government units
and target communities in joint planning and collaboration;
e. Localized
human development strategies and programs for remote and isolated atoll
countries with focus on livelihood development and environment –friendly
technologies (developed and implemented
in 10 South Pacific islands and the Maldives)
f.
Integrated area development approaches for the
promotion of MSMEs and gender Equality;
g. Development
of pro-poor planning tool (Poverty Database Monitoring System) and its eventual integration with
ecoBUDGET in local level planning which was developed in Bohol and replicated
in Bangladesh, India, and Bhutan.
h. Promotion
and application of Asset –Based Community Development (ABCD) as an alternative
to conventional deficit or problem oriented planning approach in local level
development.
Our advocacy that we establish a drug
rehabilitation center in Bohol to address social problems created by the
alarming increase of drug abuse victims and the rise in drug-related crimes in
Bohol is part of this commitment to transform the province as a social
laboratory for trying new and innovative approaches to development.
This is the opportunity presented by the
current drug menace in our midst. Despite non-cooperation of some sectors for
reasons they alone know, we are optimistic the New Day Recovery Center (NDRC)
Davao will stand by us along with well-meaning development workers and
professionals in neighboring provinces so that we are united in our efforts to
save lives, our community and country in the face of new challenges.
#Lessonsfromprojectsbohol,
NMP/14May2015/4.38
p.m.
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