How Sec Briones is responding to Asean landmark declaration for OSYs

(Part II)

Dr. Briones, when you spoke at the 50th Anniversary Dinner of the O.B. Montessori in Greenhills last Aug. 19, you emphasized the importance of the Alternative Learning System (ALS) to reach illiterate adults that comprises the majority of the poverty stricken Filipinos.  Therefore, you decided to appoint an assistant secretary for the ALS.  You went beyond the goal of the usual out-of-school youth to include the millions of adult illiterates in our country who is the main cause of our poverty. (I apologize for misquoting your name Leonor for Lourdes in my previous column.)

However, we can use as control of your adult beneficiaries, the Global UN 2030 Education for Sustainable Development agenda, which defines “out-of-school youth” as those who do not have access to a school, those who have yet to enroll in school despite having one available, those enrolled but are at risk of dropping out and those who have dropped out.

Before that gathering of 30 school heads and education deans of Metro Manila, you stated clearly your need to share our actual experiences in the transformation of our school system. So herewith may I recount our continuous commitment to our disadvantaged, underserved and depressed brothers of our country.

Oscar Arellano helps relocate 3,000 squatter families from Intramuros

In 1964, Manila Mayor Villegas relocated 3,000 families who were squatting for years in the four-meter wide walls of the historic Spanish fort of Intramuros to Sapang Palay. If the monumental task of restoring this historical spot were not decided by Malacañang, these slum dwellers would still be congesting these damp, dark and mud-filled ghettos of Intramuros. The project was funded by top three newspapers: Manila Times, Manila Chronicle and Manila Bulletin.

Architect Oscar Arellano who had been successful in fielding the Operation Brotherhood International team of doctors and nurses together with agronomists and food technologists in Vietnamese and Laotian refugee camps from mid-‘50s to the 70s organized the first Philippine Operation Brotherhood team at Sapang Palay, Bulacan. 

Their headquarters became the residence of the team members  (doctors, nurses, food technologists and agronomists), the rehabilitation classrooms, the clinic and livelihood training center.  To make the parents concentrate on their tailoring, agronomy, food preservation, etc. classes, the children were gathered into the John P. Delaney Preschool, which Oscar asked me to organize.  He made me take charge of the children’s projects for O.B. Philippine projects.

Comparing their life in the congested dirty ghettos of Intramuros they would exclaim to each other, “Mabuti pa ang buhay dito.  Hindi na pana ang ginagawa natin para tirahin yung mga pulis, kung hindi sandok ang laging dala natin sa ating cooking class.”  (Isn’t life better here?  Instead of keeping ourselves busy making slingshots and arrows for our husbands to drive away the policemen patrolling the area, we are enjoying stirring the ladle in our cooking class.)

Origin of the pagsasarili self-help system

The highest incentive of the new Sapang Palay residents was to acquire the land title to their own lot. Oscar encouraged them to prepare for this event.  He taught them that this best proof of their efforts was first – to build a toilet, and so a toilet contest was held.  The first ones to do so were given a wooden plaque that they proudly nailed to their toilet outhouse.  To a layman, this may seem insignificant and ridiculous but to the social scientists, the presence of a toilet signifies the re-conditioning of environment to be fit for decent human living. 

In two years time the O.B. team had also organized a barangay council for them.  They were also buying their own medicine instead of depending on the clinic for free help.  Unfortunately, when the O.B. team phased out, several church and so-called charity organizations spoiled this self-help attitude almost instilled by the O.B. teams who lived their twenty hours daily for two years.  The free dole-out of medicine, food and other material things regressed the residents like small children, and they became dependent again. 

As they lost their self-respect they also acquired the neurosis and false illusion that being poor they can demand from the haves or take away and grab their properties.  To make matters worse the politicians who could have helped condition the environment for the better, merely arrested the community development on the dependency level, as they vied for their votes during election time. That was our first attempt at “pagsasarili” project or helping people help themselves.

Helping our Vietnamese brothers to sustain themselves during wartime

During the ‘60s, Oscar Arellano met Gen. Gaudencio Tobias in Vietnam.  The latter accumulated enough experience in Korea with the Philippine Expeditionary Forces to Korea battalion unit.  This time in Vietnam, he handled the Philippine Civic Action Group, a battalion unit of 2,007 non-combatant engineers, doctors and trained community developers – Filipinos who helped rehabilitate the environs of refugees from North Vietnam.  The whole forest of Tay Ninh near Saigon was cleared and converted into a complete community with a school, a hospital and agricultural projects.  They compared notes on their operations, which have helped uplift the lives of the homeless refugees, our Asian brothers.  As a result, the Filipinos endeared themselves to both the Vietnamese and Laotians especially when the six Philutan (Filipinos in Vietnam) doctors and nurses gave their lives as they helped out in remote villages when they drowned traversing the Mekong River in their mission. For the following two years the number of Filipino medical and social work volunteers ballooned to 195. Operation Brotherhood International concluded its mission leaving behind a nurse training school, which Japan took over to manage. We in the Philippine Refugee Processing Center at Morong, Bataan welcomed the Vietnamese again on 1980-1990 as “the boat people” flee from the war.

Many don’t realize that Operation Brotherhood International inspired Tom Dooley, an American volunteer doctor to organize an American version of volunteers to help the poor illiterate Laotian farmers on a larger scale.  This provided the pattern for the US Peace Corps Volunteer Program.

Gen. Tobias reconditions squatter environment to be habitable

By 1980, Gen. Tobias invited me to set up affordable Montessori preschool in the NHA improved slum areas. I almost turned down this invitation because I failed twice in putting up a Montessori preschool in the slum areas of Anak Bayan, San Andres and Kaunlaran in Makati in spite of the co-sponsorship of the Soroptomist Club of Greater Manila and the Good Shepherd Sisters.

These slums were large tracts of private properties squatted on for years by rural families without steady income and were not regulated by local mayors and police.  They had neither titles to the land nor were they paying rent to the real owners.  Small charity groups cannot cope with such a magnitude of land settlement problems, but a national government agency headed by a well-meaning organizer could resolve the problem.

Slums and depressed communities are areas, which badly need basic facilities and services.  There are places, which have little or no water and power supplies.  They are often flooded because of poor drainage systems.  There are no paved roads or footpaths.  Neither are there sewerage lines or toilet facilities.  These are communities with no health clinics, schools or barangay centers, and where houses are poorly built out of low-quality materials.  In these slum areas, we find numerous “renters” and “sharers” living with house owners in a very small, dilapidated house on a 35-square meter lot.  Renters pay a certain amount of money to the house owners, while sharers are extended families who come from the province to temporarily stay with the house owners while looking for a job, or for other reasons.  These numerous renters and sharers compound the problems in the slum areas.

As a result of these poor living conditions, the people in the slums or depressed communities are often sick and prone to diseases.  With three to four families living together, the congestion triggers physical violence and sexual promiscuity.  Due to all of these, they have low productivity and therefore find it hard to increase their income.  Lack of education also keeps them from getting jobs so that unemployment is one of their major problems.  Because they cannot afford to live better, they have learned to accept life in an unhealthy, unsafe environment.

Gen. Gaudencio Tobias injected the missing factor: the re-conditioning of the environment and monitoring the operation until the families meet their responsibilities.  He initiated the ZIP zones, which improve this large tract of lands by providing electrical and plumbing lines.  Then the area was parceled into 30-40 square meter lots payable in 20 years.  He added the Community Relations Office or CRIO, whose dynamic social workers related closely to the residents and readily comprehended their situation.  Of 400 slum areas identified in Metro Manila, 30 have been improved by NHA during the 11 years that Gen. Tobias managed it. We set up Pagsasarili Preschools in eight of them.  

We are the keepers of the flame

Our Pagsasarili Preschools thrive well in such prepared environment.  It is inhuman to encourage people to live in Smokey Mountain- types of surroundings.  Our civil servants are duty-bound to remove this marginal environment for “we are keepers of the flame. The CHILD is the vessel and the bearer of the light of Christ. From him will shine forth a golden ray of light to guide the destiny of this NATION.”

(Erratum from last week’s column: Under The Parable of the Lost Sheep – the sentence should read as, “It was a difficult journey but He did not give up until the sheep was found” instead of “It was a different journey...”)

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