When I hear catchphrases like "it's about helping the people," "targeting the poor," and "community development," I always wonder what exactly the terms mean.
In college, being a member of my organization's Community Development Committee meant giving tutorials to students of a public elementary school located near my own school on Wednesday afternoons and taking the children of an urban poor community, also near my school, on field trips. The university had given my organization an award for its "community development" efforts and that was one of the reasons I picked it instead of any other group.
After a year, I felt a gnawing sense of hopelessness with my student organization's efforts and thought that its programs were not enough to bring about real change in society. I drifted away from the group and applied at another one that promised a better perspective of national issues and had a program that addressed these issues at the macroeconomic level. After a semester, I concluded that I was better off studying the issues on my own. I was an idealistic and cocky seventeen-year-old.
The desire to understand why the Philippines is poor and what can be done to get majority of Filipinos out of poverty has remained with me for years. Thus, when I found out about a conference discussing the experiences of NGOs and microfinance institutions in their work with the poor from different parts of Asia, I jumped at the chance to attend it.
Tear Fund New Zealand, a New Zealand-based Christian development organization, and its partners from Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines met in Manila to discuss "learnings on innovative development strategies." Using the case study method, presenters from various organizations discussed the best practices or best features of their programs. Panelists from other NGOs and microfinance institutions gave a critique of the presentations. Alalay sa Kaunlaran, a Philippine NGO engaged in microfinance, organized the event. Dr. Soledad Hernando from the Asian Institute of Management facilitated and synthesized the discussions.
The programs were diverse. TASK, an NGO from Cambodia, closed its clinics and decided to devote its resources to strengthening government health services and teaching communities to go to government clinics and to overcome their distrust of government.
Dian Bhuana Lestari, an NGO based in Bali, shifted it lending activities to rural villages after discovering that migrant borrowers in the cities disappeared and did not pay. An interesting discussion ensued when the Indonesian presenters were asked how the husbands of the women who participated in the program reacted to their wives having activities of their own. In a highly patriarchal society like Bali, the NGOs emphasized that the women's efforts were for the family and that husbands would benefit from their wives' additional income from pig-raising.
After the presentations were completed, participants were formed into smaller groups for workshops to apply what they learned from the presentations to their own work at the field. They had to answer the following questions: Which practices have you assessed to be most useful to your team? Are there issues and risks that would hinder effective adoption of these strategies? Which strategies can be immediately replicated? Do you foresee any need for support or assistance to facilitate integration or replication of strategies?
Having no knowledge of community development paradigms and models, I found myself learning a new vocabulary. It was comforting to hear touchy issues being discussed, such as the need to preserve cultural integrity among indigenous peoples and the possibility that the groups were imposing their Christian beliefs on those with different spiritual practices. When the predominantly Christian group at the conference confronted these matters, I knew they were serious about learning and becoming better at what they do.
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Email: kay.malilong@gmail.com.