Philippines - Giving communities the chance to take charge

Kabalaka (Concern) Development Foundation has been at the forefront of community development in sugar plantation communities in Negros Occidental, Philippines for the past 20 years. Now it is restructuring itself along the lines of a community foundation, having realized that the key to sustainability lies in building a local constituency and creating shared ownership anchored in trust, accountability and transparency.

Called haciendas, the Philippine sugar plantations operate like a feudal system of old owing to Spain’s 300 years of occupation in the Philippines. This situation changed in the early 1980s when a severe economic crisis crippled the sugar industry leaving peasants with no work. With widespread poverty, Marxist ideology sprouted and the planters were under threat of rebellion. In the midst of this situation, a new breed of planters emerged and formed Kabalaka to assist the workers and their families. Since then, the organization has run youth development, livelihood, infrastructure, spiritual and health programmes in these communities. Its impressive track record has won the respect of the NGO community, donors, the local government and most of all the communities themselves.

But Kabalaka always strives for improvement. In 2000, it participated in an organizational effectiveness project undertaken by the International Council on Management of Population Programmes (ICOMP), supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. In the process, staff competency and management systems were enhanced. And much more. Kabalaka realized the importance of sustainability which goes beyond the realm of finances.

Beyond money

Kabalaka’s new understanding of sustainability encompasses other equally important dimensions such as organizational capacity, programme effectiveness and community impact. ‘More than anything else, our fate lies in the hands of communities. We have built their capacities and improved their lives, yet we have never maximized their talents and resources. We should give them the chance to take charge,’ says Alexandra Gelle, Kabalaka’s manager.

Kabalaka and ICOMP jointly searched for an appropriate approach to sustainability. After a long search which involved meeting different NGOs and a literature review (Alliance was one useful resource), the community foundation model emerged. However, some concerns came to the fore. While the model has succeeded in the West, it is new in this country and Kabalaka does not know of any local examples as yet. Besides, in most cases the model works in more developed settings. Can it work in poor communities?

Kabalaka then consulted families, planters and the local government and asked them if they were interested in supporting local initiatives through a community foundation. There was an overwhelming expression of support. Kabalaka’s findings were validated through an independent study conducted by ICOMP in mid 2001.

Generating community support

Even in poor communities such as Negros, families seem to be willing to contribute their hard-earned money, time and talents. The planters vowed to give financial support, help strengthen existing cooperatives and provide scholarships for deserving youths while the local government pledged financial resources, policy support and use of its facilities.

However, there is one indispensable condition. Families, planters and local government alike will only contribute their resources and talents through a trustworthy channel, which can assure transparency and accountability. From ICOMP’s study, Kabalaka was identified as having the credibility and capacity to play this role. Tomas, a farmer, described it succinctly, ‘Kabalaka has been with us for years and their sincerity is tested and proven.’

Adjusting the organization

Transforming Kabalaka into a community foundation means a radical change of mindset, not only in the communities but also among Kabalaka staff. Regular dialogues are going on within the organization. The key message is that ‘communities should become partners rather than recipients of development’.

Kabalaka is now recasting its core programmes and core functions.[1] It will restructure its system to increase community participation and allow volunteers to play a bigger role. Volunteers will be trained under each programme and core function. For instance, a group of farmers from well-managed cooperatives could serve as consultants to other communities. Or a group of local young professionals could serve as counsellors in community youth centres. The financial management system will also be reconfigured to ensure more transparency. A consultant is being hired to guide Kabalaka through this transformation process.

Pilot test

Pilot tests in two distinct setting have recently begun to show how the model could work in poor communities. One is in a community Kabalaka has assisted for years while another is in a community which has not yet received support from it. ‘The pilots allow communities to define development in their own terms and work together to make it happen,’ says Kabalaka president Marilou Jalandoni.

Kabalaka is making a big move but it is undaunted because it believes that sustainability works best when communities take charge.

1 Under the new set-up, programmes will focus on five key areas, namely family development, livelihood, environment, health and nutrition, and youth development. Core functions will be community mobilization and wealth creation, training, information, education and communication and advocacy, partnership and networking, and research and documentation. Point persons from the board, the staff and communities will be assigned for each core programme and core function.

Elmer Herradura Lighid is a Programme Officer at the International Council on Management of Population Programmes, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He can be contacted at popmgt@po.jaring.my

Community philanthropy at a distance? - Jeremaiah M Opiniano

Pozorrubio, Philippines, 200 kilometres north of Manila – this used to be a dark town because the local government and residents could not afford streetlights. Now, it is well lit; its market stall owners do a brisk trade; the town’s 307 small businesses include Internet cafes and video shops renting out the latest Hollywood movies; and Italian-style villas can be seen everywhere. This is surprising in a rural municipality in the Philippines, where 40 per cent of the 79 million citizens live below the poverty line. But people ‘outside’ are helping transform Pozorrubio into an agro-commercial local economy.

Pozorrubio has an estimated 5,800 migrant workers, which is 10 per cent of the town’s total population. For the Philippines overall, its citizens overseas number 7.41 million, and for the last three years they have remitted over US$6 billion a year. Assuming that each Pozorrubian overseas remits a minimum of US$100 back home each month, this adds up to about $5.8 million (about PhP 290.87 million). Where does this money go?

Most migrants work abroad to help meet the consumption needs of their families. ‘I had to work abroad for my 13 children so that they could finish school,’ says 62-year-old Josefa Castillo, a returnee who worked for 16 years as a domestic worker in Hong Kong. Not surprisingly, many Poruzzubian migrants donate money to local schools, and the church is another popular cause. Over half of the PhP 3 million needed to build the ceiling of St Jude Thaddeus parish church came from abroad, with donations mostly coming from the US, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong. The stethoscopes used in the Pozorrubio Community Hospital came from Pozorrubians in Chicago, while the Pozorrubians of Greater Los Angeles donated a toilet to the hospital, with a plaque outside it to make known publicly who donated it.

Sometimes remittances are sent individually, sometimes through organizations like the Pozorrubians Association in Hong Kong (PAHK), founded by Castillo in 1994 but disbanded in 1996 – something that is much regretted by Artemio Calpito, village captain of Palguyod, whose village received from PAHK 32 plastic chairs for village-wide fiesta celebrations. PAHK, according to Castillo’s documents, gave an estimated over PhP 121,000 in donations in the two years it existed.

These phenomena are often labelled diaspora philanthropy – although the author prefers the term transnational philanthropy,[1] which clearly suggests the element of fostering and harnessing of relations between those abroad and those back home – the transnationalism – which is so evident in this kind of philanthropy. Pozorrubio provides a good example of transnational philanthropy in action in a town with a significant migrant population, where even migrants with vulnerable or unskilled occupations donate money to their home town. It can also surely be seen as an example of community philanthropy at a distance.

1 See the author’s paper titled ‘The Dynamics of Transnational Philanthropy by Migrant Workers to their Communities of Origin: The case of Pozorrubio, Philippines’, presented to the fifth international conference of the International Society for Third-Sector Research (ISTR), 7-10 July, Cape Town, South Africa, upon which this article is based.

Jeremaiah Opiniano is a project officer of the Institute on Church and Social Issues (ICSI), a social policy research and advocacy NGO based at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He can be contacted at jopiniano@lycos.com