Lessons learned

IFI-VIMROD lessons learned during our phase five implementation

Community organizing Goal:

Empowered KKKs and federations capable of adequately responding to and addressing their community issues and concerns

Lessons Learned:

 Community integration is a key factor to deliver appropriate and effective development approaches.

 The formation of KKKs are manifestation of their trust and understanding to IFI-VIMROD’s development agenda

 Giving high respect to different cultures helped IFI-VIMROD to persevere and realize its good intentions


Development Education Goal:

To enhance the knowledge, skills and attitudes of KKK and federation leaders and members in managing their organizations and other relevant activities.

Lessons Learned:

 the program has nurtured the peasant partners’ positive outlook on gender.

 it helped the staff to explore and learn creative teaching techniques

 Their KSA development reflects on their initiatives


Advocacy & Networking Goal:

Visible & active support of the IFI diocesan leadership in the Visayas and Mindanao to the development initiatives of the KKKs and the Federations.

Lessons Learned:

 This program helped IFI-VIMROD to learn how to be efficient and effective

 This encourages the staff to conduct timely planning, monitoring and evaluation to identify its strength and correct its weaknesses


Conclusion:

The lessons in Phase 5 helped IFI-VIMROD to set up much clearer directions in the next phase. As long as IFI-VIMROD pursues its mandate, its instrumentality will always be valued by the marginalized sectors that it is serving.

The Farmers

As a predominantly agricultural country, majority of the Filipinos depend on agriculture as their source of livelihood. Ironically, farmers and agricultural workers are the ones who benefit the least from the “improvement” in the economy. The Philippine agricultural sector has been suffering from a series of trade setbacks since 1994. This was the time the Philippine government started to liberalize agriculture in preparation for the World Trade Organization, which was established the following year. From then on, the country has been importing seeds, fertilizers and crops including those we primarily produce like rice and corn.

The Moro people

It has been the experience of Mindanao that the so-called development aggression -- mainly by big mining, logging and big agricultural companies, many of them transnational corporations – has victimized mainly Moro and indigenous peoples, displacing them from their ancestral lands. This policy of dispossession, which has been implemented in Mindanao for decades now by the tandem of government and big business, gave birth to the various rebellions in Mindanao.
For the Moro people, the central issue that drove mainland Mindanao to violence was mainly due to land grabbing. With the government’s promotion of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao to potential foreign investors, it once again committed a disservice to the cause of peace by removing strategic minerals and natural resources from the scope of ancestral domain and will rob native inhabitants of their birthright over their God-given natural resources.

Added to this harsh situation is the militarization of the area where opposition to the entry of potential foreign investors is strong and the labeling of the conflict as Christian-Muslim conflict. This tragic story of Christian-Muslim conflict in Mindanao sacrificed thousand of lives of innocent civilians and created great damaged to properties and sources of livelihood.

With the government’s active participation to the Global War on Terrorism, it is fearful to note that legitimate struggle of the indigenous and Moro peoples to protect their ancestral domain and assert their right to self determination is often times tagged as an act of terrorism.

Indigenous people

For indigenous people (IP) and national minorities in Mindanao, the exploitation of their ancestral land and living spaces is the height of national oppression. Environmental degradation, suffered in the hands of globalization has led to the destruction of their culture and livelihood. Laws such as the Indigenous People’s Right Act (IPRA), the National Integrated and Protected Area Systems (NIPAS), the Mining Act of 1995 only devastate their habitats, local economy and traditional way of life. More often than not, foreign companies enter our country and in collaboration with the ruling class, plunder our natural resources, leaving virtually nothing for the succeeding generations.
Militarization in relation to the entry of big mining companies in the indigenous people’s communities has also reached an alarming situation. It was no less than a UN observer that urged the government to look into the continued deterioration of the indigenous people’s human rights due to conflict in the countryside.

The Fisherfolks

The Philippines hosts the longest discontinuous coastline in the world. For an archipelago, coastal and marine ecosystems are particularly vital because they provide food, raw materials, and ecological balance. However, for the past few years, our aquatic resources have been rapidly dwindling. Different studies show that fishing at the coastal area has already reached, if not surpassed the maximum sustainable yield. Aquatic resources’ depletion is the natural consequences of over-fishing perpetuated by big commercial fishers who are mostly foreigners. Such situation exposes the ill effects of exploiting nature in the name of profit. Equipped with resources like big and highly mechanized fishing vessels, big commercial fishers easily displaced small and traditional Filipino fisher folks who still employ outdated fishing equipment.

The Current National Context

Filipinos today are living in a society best characterized by socio-economic underdevelopment and political disunity.

The present government has accepted the truth that the country is facing fiscal crisis which is definitely far from over amidst allegations that some government officials committed massive plunder of the national treasury and further indebtedness brought by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s corruption before, during and after the 2004 elections.

In the urban centers, massive and successive demolition of urban poor communities to pave the way to infrastructure and development projects owned and financed mostly by foreign capitals continue to displace thousands of families.
In the rural areas, the more than a decade implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program manifests the continuing failure of the government to guarantee genuine land reform, just wages, job security and social services for the rural poor.
In Negros Island for instance contrary to Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) claims of high accomplishments in land distribution in Negros, a closer scrutiny of its actual land distribution as of 2004 reveals a measly 15 percent of its total targets of 246,465 hectares. Even DAR’s compulsory acquisition of commercial farms/plantations of 50 hectares and above, which should have started in 1998, has covered a dismal 656 hectares most of which are bank-foreclosed lands anyway.
Another irony is the fact that of 153,650 hectares of sugar lands marked by DAR Task Force Sugarland for land distribution, only 26,992 hectares of sugar lands are actually covered in Negros Occidental, the bastion of landlord monopoly, while 126,658 hectares are in Negros Oriental. Today, of the 1.33 million hectares total land area of Negros, 818,991.026 hectares are under private control. Of these, some 618,991 hectares are controlled by 46,574 landowners; about 200,000 hectares comprising 101 hectares and above are controlled by 486 families only. This practically placed around two-third of Negros lands are under private monopoly control.
The wanton destruction of environment through continuing promotion of large scale mining and logging put to risk the lives and food security of the next generations.

The perpetual subservience to US-led globalization policies and unwavering support to the immoral and unjust US wars of aggression and intervention has put the country in the reign of state-sponsored terror and repression through the Calibrated Preemptive Response (CPR) policy which brutally suppresses the people’s right to hold peaceful assemblies to redress grievances and legitimate demands as prescribed in the Philippine Constitution; and the unnecessary anti-terror bill which considers legitimate political dissent as an act of terrorism. Alarming to note also is the wave of ruthless killings, enforced disappearances and massive displacement of communities resulting into a clear pattern of repression and destroying the people’s efforts to have a life of abundance and dignity.

Aside from the fact that the country is divided into several islands where cultural barriers are real, disunity roots from severe disillusionment caused by economic deprivation and, corollary, the people’s feeling of powerlessness due to intense oppression and exploitation.

The Philippines is rich, the Filipinos are poor

The Philippines is located in Southeast Asia, just above the equatorial line. It is surrounded by oceans: in the east by the Pacific Ocean, in the west by the South China Sea and in the north by the Bashi Strait and in the south by the Sulu and Celebes Seas. The Philippines is made up of 7,100 islands, big and small. It is a country overflowing with natural resources. Foremost of these is land, which is important to an agricultural country such as the Philippines. The Philippines has a total land area of 30 million hectares of which 13 million hectares is agricultural land. 5.1 million hectares is devoted for rice and corn while 3.3 million hectares is planted with coconut and the rest is planted with other crops banana, pineapple, etc. Alluvial soils that make up most of the land are rich in minerals and can grow almost any crop. The Philippines is surrounded by 1,600,000 square kilometers of territorial waters. These are home to some 2,100 fish species. But in spite of its abundance, the majority of the Filipinos are poor.

A Church Committed to Community Development

Iglesia Filipina Independiente...
A Church committed to community development

A glimpse of the past...

When Iglesia Filipina Independiente was proclaimed by the first confederation of labor unions in the Philippines, the Union Obrera Democratica, on August 3, 1902, it's forst Supreme Bishop declared: "the church is the product of the peoples desire for liberty and development as a people and as a nation." It can be recalled that the historical context when the Church was established is within the continuing struggle of the Filipino people for a free and independent nation, hence in the midst of the early members of the IFI, human development is one of it's primarily concern. The IFI, conscious of its mission and historical vocation, is concerned and believe that it mnust get involved and participate actively in human development for this is the imperative of the Gospel.

The Iglesia Filipina Independiente perceives development:

* as a continuing process and growth towards fulfillment in accordance with God's will;
* As the peoples concrete response to God's initiative in His continuing work of creation;
* As means of uplifting human dignity towards self-reliance, self-governance and self-propagation;
* As reaffirmation of the historical and cultural heritage of the Filipino Church.

It is essential task of the church to promote the good of everyone, of the whole person, and of the whole human community. This concern for human development is an expression of faith. IFI believe that persons humanity is God's gift and it is our responsibility to preserve and uphold it.

For the IGlesia Filipina Independiente, the church missionary presence in the world is her being the Salt, the Light, the Leaven (Mt. 5:13-15), in the same process and manner that the Filipino people "may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10b). Therefore, development of people is nourishing them to enhance the potentialities God has bestowed upon them so that they may enjoy life and have it abundantly and to enable them to share such abundance with their fellow beings.

The IFI is so specific with her development concept. Conscious that it is an imperative for her to transform concepts into actions; she has to undertake development programs as an expression of its commitment to social action. In 1989, as a concrete response to fulfill her mission to be relevant to the Philippine society, the IFI Bishops in the Visayas and Mindanao dioceses decided to establish a community development program the IFI-Visayas Mindanao Regional Office for Development (IFI-VIMROD).