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Remembering the Children

In May of 2007, I participated in a global exhibit of children’s art in London . The idea of the project was to present through visual art the vision of the world’s children of the future. I represented the Philippines in the exhibit and two months before that, I went home to Bohol to conduct the art workshop with children from the Bohol Crisis Intervention Centre. The Bohol Crisis Intervention Centre, a project jointly managed by the Provincial Government of Bohol ( http://www.bohol.gov.ph/ ) and Feed the Children Philippines, Inc. ( http://feedthechildrenphils.org/ ), is a temporary shelter for abused children. Since its establishment, the centre has handled more than 300 cases already. In March 2007, 37 children were housed in the centre, located in a secure compound in the heart of Tagbilaran City, the provincial capital. The centre provides housing, food, counselling, and educational support to these children as well as coordinates their appearance in court hearings. Centre office

Independence Day

(This piece was written in 2001 on the occassion of the Independence Day celebration. It originally appeared in Panglantaw, a publication that a few souls wanted to put up and successfully printed for at least three quarters. It is amazing that after eight years, not much has changed. The lines written here, as I read them again, seemed fresh, making me think that sometimes, not much has changed, except that President Arroyo transferred the non-working holiday to a Monday.) Today is Independence Day and like most of the people in our country, I am tempted to say “What the heck if it is?” Independence Day after all is just another red day in a calendar, another breather to a lousy office schedule, or another real day-off in an often-day-off government work. Yesterday, I watched my cousin hang a flag by the window and sensed the feeling of “its-a-requirement” air in his face. Besides, what meaning has a flag to us nowadays, except for the fact that it’s something we send off to air every

What's With NGOs?

The role of non-governmental organizations in development has been subjected to numerous praise and criticisms in literature. Fisher (1997) reviews these schools of thought and identified two separate sets of views. One view regards NGOs as “apolitical tools that can be wielded to further a variety of modified development goals” while the second imposes large expectations of NGOs as “vehicles for challenges to and transformations of relationships of power”. Other theorists hints on another significant criticism of NGOs: their potential to eclipse the role of the state (Collier 2000, Putzel 2004, Kamat 2004) and succeed as agents of development at the cost of the state legitimacy (White 1999). NGOs Replacing the Government? NGOs in Bohol, despite its good intentions to supplement the efforts of the provincial government, have the potential to replace the state’s role as provider of basic services, thereby decreasing the LGUs accountability to the general public in terms of basic service

Joseph and that Unforgettable Loboc River Cruise

I was with my family on a river cruise in the famous Loboc river when our boatman and tour guide Joseph made striking remarks and critical questions that every person thinking about development, whether in local, national, or international spheres, must ponder on. Joseph, to most of us in that brief boat ride, embodied every soul that is forcefully and unjustly included in the ‘development’ process, and even those that are, without choice, excluded from its supposed benefits. “I used to walk along this riverbank to be able to go to school. I come from a barangay near the ‘busay’ (the waterfalls) that we are about to see in a short while”., Joseph told us as we were cruising the river upstream in a motorized banca (boat). “I am the first person in our village that finished high school. Maybe it’s our poverty condition that prevented most of us to go to school, or just the plain difficulty of walking along this river especially during the rainy season.”, he continued. He mentioned that m

Where Have All The Good Roads Gone?

The taxi drivers in Tagbilaran City realized one thing - that it’s better to drive passengers to Jagna than to anywhere in the city. The reason though is not about traffic, but road condition. It seems that repair and maintenance of the city’s roads have become of lesser importance than a planned costly installation of monitoring cameras in several locations within Tagbilaran. Except for the new concrete roads at CP Garcia Avenue, the city’s main street, which was part of a provincial circumferential road project, not much improvement can be observed in the city’s main thoroughfares. Gallares Street, the one that connects the pier to many of the city’s landmarks – K of C Church, Ramiro Hospital, Bohol Quality , Holy Name University , and the St. Joseph Cathedral - is in such a sorry state. J.A. Clarin also shares the same fate. If these major streets are in this condition, what can we expect of the smaller ones, and the others that still remain unpaved to these days? They say that deve

"Inyong Alagad"

It’s a good thing to listen to Fred Araneta again, sharing the airtime with replacement anchor Chito Visarra in the all-time favourite DYRD radio program “Inyong Alagad”(Your Servant). I was on my way to work one Tuesday morning (19 February) and chanced upon the duo interviewing in their radio show Deputy Mayor Mario Uy and Vice Mayor Toto Veloso, discussing the recent suspension of operations of the “Botika sa Katawhan”(Public Pharmacy), an establishment that provides inexpensive medicines to poor clients in the city of Tagbilaran. All the fuss started when city Councilor Zenaido Rama, interestingly not politically-aligned with City Mayor Dan Lim, questioned the operations of the said establishment managed by Lim’s strong ally, Deputy Mayor Uy, on the basis that its operations is “too politicized” and that “some of its beneficiaries do not qualify as indigents” ( BC, 17 February 2008 ). In retaliation, Mayor Lim ordered the operations of the pharmacy suspended until such time that th

They Do Not Come Out in the Papers

It’s amazing why a few good things, though how phenomenal they are, do not get printed in our newspapers while all the mudslinging, dirty politics, and boxing matches do. It’s also quite spectacular why a public official who inaugurates a building gets full media treatment (read: words, sounds, and pictures) but not when a non-governmental organization was able to strengthen the livelihood of 536 rural poor households. Last Friday (15 February), I presented an independent evaluation report on a project implemented by the Soil and Water Conservation Foundation in four Eskaya communities in the towns of Duero, Guindulman, Sierra Bullones, and Pilar and in 8 other barangays within Sierra Bullones. The project was successful in increasing the income of around 345 rural households, from below 2,000 monthly gross income to 2,500 and more. It also made possible the strengthening of 12 community associations, most of which currently have more than P70,000 of capital build up (from almost nothi

Remembering Sir Nits

Atty. Juanito Cambangay , retired chief of the Provincial Planning and Development Office of Bohol , can be considered one of the province’s inspiring development architects. Having served the province in different transition phases – from one governor to another, from centralized to decentralized governmental authority, from economic obscurity to growth and relative prosperity - “Nits”, as he is fondly called by friends and colleagues, was among those who can be credited for Bohol’s successful development efforts. I do not claim to have known the man personally (He is “Sir Nits” to me, a sign both of respect and admiration). My close encounters with him were on a few occasions only. One time we worked together as member of the Philippine delegation tasked to evaluate a Japan International Cooperation Agency project, when I was still very young and inexperienced in a lot of things. On a car ride with him from Ubay to Tagbilaran, I had my first lessons in Development 101. Years later, w

Pack Your Bags and Move On

I have difficulty packing things up for a trip, especially when going back is not an immediate option. Last January 2, leaving for Bangkok for the second half of my temporary UN assignment was a difficult thing to do, especially because I have to, again, borrow time from my son and wife with whom I have not spent much time for the last couple of years. I tiredly dragged my luggage towards the airport gate and the more I moved the heavier it became. I thought to myself that this could possibly be the kind of experience public officials have on their last term of office. They are caught in a dilemma of whether to stay on or to move ahead. Staying does not necessarily mean standing up again for another re-election, since this is entirely unallowable under Philippine laws, but fielding in one’s wife, father, sister, brother, mother, cousin, aunt, or what have you, to run for the post one is presently occupying and running for another post, either lower or higher, depending upon one’s capac

Twin Tragedy

“…. the twins were found embracing each other while floating lifeless in the deep well.” ( Bohol Chronicle , 18 November 2007) I was dumbfounded reading the news on November 18 about two boys who died in San Isidro, Pilar - drowned in a well near their house while their parents were in the fields and an elder brother was watching TV. Though I have not seen nor known the boys personally, I feel a deep sense of remorse and regret, and an unexplainable sense of sadness swept over me. It is maybe because I am a father that I can very well relate how such a grave loss could affect one immensely. Or maybe because I know Pilar quite well, because I have worked there when I was still very young and free of cares, that those children, faceless as they were in the news story I was reading, brought vivid images of children in Pilar that I have talked to in my endless wanderings in the rice fields. Or maybe because I can see myself as that young boy watching TV, which loud noise drowned the cri

Dam(n) Proactivity

I thought then that to be proactive was always desirable. Bringing an umbrella in London even without a “rain forecast” is always a good thing, because even the weather bureau at BBC fails to predict weather conditions a number of times. But it is another story when you wear winter clothes in Bohol because you anticipate that the snow would come any time of the day. Call that insane proactivity, if you like. But it is how government is run sometimes in this part of the archipelago. You build a dam and then wait for the water level to rise (reminds me of that bridge that never gets finished because it would destroy an-age old church). This October, President Macapagal Arroyo once again visited her favoured Bohol to officially inaugurate the Bayongan Dam , completed in controversy as it exceeded its 2.3 billion project cost by 52% (Bohol Chronicle, 14 October 2007). Despite opposition from farmer’s groups because of the project’s effects on the environment and its uselessness to address