Laudable efforts of Kaisampalad Inc.

By CHITO DELA TORRE
July 27, 2011

KAISAMPALAD Inc., or KPI, a national non-government organization, continues to affect the lives and behavior of some potential community leaders in the Eastern Visayas Region, as it does in Mindanao, in relation to their understanding of how certain norms could be effectively injected into some transformation processes leading towards making rural areas developed amidst contending theories and forces of development.  The affectation may still be at a slow rate, which is just right for a KPI’s new development laboratory that the Waray region is, but it seems to be in the right track.  It is the right response to what its takers may eventually realize to be an stimulus that should have come from the government but which could not due to dichotomous politics and erratic people’s participation in what Ka Oca Francisco described as “governance” in a Philippine democracy.  The desirable behavior should continue even if it needs to mobilize self-initiatives.

Organized in 1995, KPI advocates for local economy development through the collaboration of the various stakeholders in the value chain system.  It is also campaigning for the promotion, and adoption and integration as well, of conflict transformation, corporate social responsibility and corporate accountability.  KPI’s program areas are the Eastern Visayas, the CARAGA region, and the National Capital Region (NCR).

According to KPI executive director Ray P. Abanil, who was in Tacloban last July 19 for a consultation-workshop that tackled the challenges for the banana sub-sector: “We are currently implementing a project called ‘Integrating Conflict Transformation and Democratization in Selected Value Chain Sub-sectors of Local Economies in Southern Philippines’ with two other NGOs, the Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao (AFRIM) and Tripeople Concern  for Peace, Progress, and Development in Mindanao (TRICOM).   AFRIM is an independent research and advocacy NGO that has been operating in Mindanao for 32 year now.  TRICOM works with indigenous peoples and Moro communities in Central Mindanao in securing their ancestral domains as well as increasing their capacity to participate in various levels of local governance.  The project aims to contribute to the development of the coconut and banana subsectors in CARAGA, coffee subsector in Sultan Kudarat, and banana subsector in Leyte fostering collaboration among value chain actors, building capabilities in conflict transformation, and promoting enterprise development.  In CARAGA, the province of Agusan del Norte is KPI’s focus area.”

Executive Director Abanil points out that the banana subsector has a strong economic importance for the province (of Leyte).  “While efforts are in place to promote development in the subsector, issues are still faced by producers and even traders in the various stages of the value chain.  Various forms of conflict also arise in the process.  Addressing these concerns is not only the role of government.  Participation of value chain actors and other stakeholders in the province is important as well.”

Besides these, the KPI, through its regional coordinator for Region 8, Judy Torres, has gone to related concerns of development, all acceptable to all those to whom they were introduced.  For instance, on his own and with the active participation of Baktas Kabub’wason Rural Workers Association in Basey through its president Teodorico “Dioring” D. Porbus and initiative of the Department of Agrarian Reform Samar Settlement Project in Basey, organic banana planting was introduced among agrarian farmer beneficiaries in Basey, Samar between August and December of 2010.  For another, the KPI, still in collaboration with Baktas and DAR-SSP-Basey, conducted a training on Natural Farming Systems last September in barangay Sawa where eleven barrios were represented.

Last July 12, the KPI gave a computer-aided training on community organizing for the core group of the newly founded (co-convened on May 30, 2011 by pastor Guillermo Gacutan of Basey Baptist Church, Baktas and youth leaders Michael U. Dela Torre and Myron Gandia).  Judy was the principal resource speaker.  Issues on community organizing in Basey were tackled.  Towards the close of the training that was held at the office of the DAR at the Espina Building in Baybay, Basey under the auspices of the DAR  municipal agrarian reform officer, the participants (most of whom were agrarian reform beneficiaries) planned and scheduled their proposed activities that would climax with a big event one year after.  The planning was a response to KPI’s helpful inputs.

This afternoon, as part of that response, the COrBa will give a brief echo of that training for leaders of all other religious and community groups that it has invited, including the ALERT chapter that was formed last Sunday, thanks to pastor Marvin G. Añonuevo who heads the church that he founded in Pagsanghan, Samar.  COrBa convenor Guil Gacutan plans to cap the activity with the election of officers of the COrBa, with the participants as added members from whom other officers may be chosen.  The Metropolitan Bible Baptist Mission house in Loyo (to the right of the ascending road to the Basey hospital) will play host to the event, thanks to its pastor, Douglas D. Dela Torre, who was among Judy’s trainees last July 12, like his son Michael.  As participants will head back for their own homes, they will be looking forward to the preparation of their constitution and by-laws, registration with the Department of Labor and Employment, and the conduct of CO-related activities, such as the formation of core groups or cadres in selected barrios of Basey.

Off tangent to these, Mercy G. Caboboy of the office of Basey mayor Igmedio Junji E. Ponferrada, informed this section that the Holy Child Building of the MSH Sisters Academy in sitio Bangon of barangay Canmanila, about 1.3 kilometers from the town proper of Basey (towards the road to Catbalogan City, Samar) was blessed at ten o’clock in the morning last July 23, following a Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass at the school quadrangle, officiated by His Excellency Most Reverend Isabelo Abarquez, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Calbayog, and assisting priests, and the inauguration ceremonies which consisted of the cutting of the ceremonial ribbon and turnover of the ceremonial key.  The blessing was followed by a program and Agape Lunch at the quadrangle which saw selected fourth year studes rendering the Body of Christ Song, presentation (Life is a Beautiful Thing) by graders, and another presentation (Liwanag at Gabay) by selected studes.  Mayor Ponferrada gave the welcome talk.  Ex-mayor Mansueto Delovino and international Papal awardee and district supervisor Alejo Yu of the Basey I school district shared their meaningful thoughts with the audiences.

Mercy said that the MSH Sisters Academy of Basey was actually born inside the public school premises of Basey in during the school year 2006-2007, as probably the first in the Philippines for a Catholic school to be given birth within a public school environment, using government buildings as its first classrooms.  The building built as Extension of the then Leyte State College (now Leyte State University, LNU) at Basey 1 was the first school building and home economics was used by the MSH Sisters as their living quarters (bedroom, sala, kitchen, dining room, chapel , school canteen and library, all in a space of just 6X5 or 30 square meters.  Growing fast in enrolment, the school had to move to a wider but lower area near the big river, so much so that there were months of the year that the school was affected by the tide of the river.   During high tides, the school becomes an island with its first floor only a few inches higher than the water level.