VIDA volunteer Constantine Carluen takes a break from his hectic schedule as the Development Communications Officer for the Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Program to reflect on the past 2 years.

The Philippines: a second rebirth

When friends and family from back home ask me what is it I do in the Philippines, I jokingly reply “I tell the human story of where your taxes go!” 

Although, I soon found out that writing and photography will only play a small part in the work I do. One of the ‘perks’ of my job is I a spend a lot of time traveling to projects around the country, I have travelled all over Luzon and the Visayas but due to the continuing conflict in Mindanao, this culturally diverse region still remains elusive. Through my travels, I have seen first-hand how Australia’s oldest and most successful community development initiative in the Philippines has been successfully contributing to rural development by empowering communities.

I grew up in Australia although I was born in the Philippines which made returning to the Philippines seem like a test of how Filipino I really am. Understanding the official national language certainly proved a bonus but in a country with 12 major regional languages and over 170 dialects, often I was caught asking for a translation and thinking to myself ‘now I understand how it must feel for those non-Filipino volunteers!’

Community empowerment battles poverty- a silent beast.  

Returning as a VIDA helped me connect to the real Philippines, forcing me to see the widespread poverty head on. It is with no exaggeration to say that poverty in the Philippines can be seen at every street corner in the big cities but it is when you travel to the provinces that poverty lies as a silent beast. The smiling faces of farmers drying their palay (rice husks) on the roadside as you drive by hide the stark realities that they are the ones who you hear about who earn less than $1 a day.

A highlight of my time here has been visiting a PACAP-assisted indigenous community deep in the Cagayan Valley. When I say deep, I do not say this loosely. Imagine travelling for 30 hours to get to a site! This involved a 20 hour drive to the northernmost tip of the mainland, followed by a 10 hour pumpboat ride over open seas. For the uninitiated a pumpboat is an outrigger motor boat powered by a 14HP engine measuring only 25 feet by 3 feet at its widest - usually reserved for short trips to dive sites.

The project here has been of tremendous importance to the beneficiaries as it has contributed to their social development and environmental conservation. But as I was told by Ms Libertad Alcantara, the project’s coordinator it was only able to succeed due to community participation.

Ms Alcantara added, “The project enhanced the Agtas skills and knowledge to manage their ancestral domain. You see, by mobilizing the community to rehabilitate their natural resources through agroforestry, assisted natural rehabilitation (ANR) and rattan rehabilitation, in effect, they have also augmented their income for labor in maintenance, seedling production, and staking/out-planting.”

“In addition to environmental benefits, the project also provided fishing gear to sustain the community’s basic necessities. Medical outreach teams have visited to ensure the well-being of the community is maintained and a spring box water system has also been implemented to meet the community’s basic services needs” she excitedly counts off.

Ms Alcantara goes on to say that, the project has had strong support from different levels of Government. I have seen that this ability to develop relationships with different levels of government is one of the unifying strengths PACAP has.

Take for example, in the island province of Bohol where PACAP has a strong presence. The Bridging Enterprises for Sustained Tourism (BEST) in Bohol, one of the funded projects looks at the more straightforward principle of rural development contributing to economic growth. BEST in Bohol has been a marked success because of strong links with the Provincial Government, national line agencies, such as the Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Science and Technology and the Bohol Tourism Office and with local government units.

Ms Leonila Amputsa the project’s coordinator proudly boasts “The project has had many successes. It has seen people’s organisatons being formed from scratch and become a social enterprise trading to leading tourist hubs.”

However, the most tangible outcomes is the amount each beneficiary has earned. It’s quite simple really, the capability building trainings for the people’s organization members led to a diversification in the products they made.

“In only two years of implementation the POs (people’s organization) have a capital build up of nearly 37,0000 pesos (or 1,000 AUD) with an accumulated savings of 17,5000 (500 AUD), and for some beneficiaries this is more than a 100% increase in their income,” Ms Amputsa concluded.

Family bonds, friendships made, future plans

Working with the highly skilled staff at PACAP I was left wondering what skills I could possibly transfer. Though in the end, it wasn’t what I was able to transfer but the friendships I made with friends who were more like family. Friends who went out of their way to make sure everything was ok in my time with them.

Growing up in Sydney, I always thought I was a city kid but after living in the craziness that is Manila for over two years and seeing first-hand the difference community engagement makes to rural development, it has made me rethink if I’m a city kid after all! Maybe my next move might be to contribute to rural development instead of being a mere witness…