Update on club projects in Cebu Philippines

SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION FOUNDATION

101 L Elizabeth Pond,   Camputhaw, Cebu City, Philippines

New Year, 2013

Dear Mike, Beryl, Eleanor and all the Canadian Rotary Clubs,

I would like to share with you what I believe is the fruit of your labor.  

I attended the SWCF People Organizations (PO) Congress just before Christmas.     We have been doing this for the last 15 years.  Nineteen POs were represented.  In past years, these POs report on their operations.   Common to these reports are how their members were advantaged by different services of their coops.

This year the report was a bit different.   One coop reported P1000 contribution to the church.  (My eyebrows lifted, these people seldom prioritized the need of their churches, and it is usually the opposite.) An upland coop treated their schoolchildren to “angel burgers”.  “Chicken rice soup is the usual fare for the government’s feeding program.  Our coop treated them to the burgers. We wanted our children to taste what burgers were like since they never had it before.” said the reporter. Three of the POs allotted in their annual budget to the feeding program of the local daycare centers. This is to fill in the gaps when the government fails to deliver the food due to bureaucracy. (At last, a few are partnering with the local government in its feeding programs.) Another PO sent P2000 aid to the typhoon victims in Mindanao last year. (This was unheard of before.  Usually, our POs think they are too poor to help others and would rather keep their savings in preparation for untoward incidents among their members.)  But the one that impressed me the most was the Rizal Batuan Multi-purpose cooperative. This cooperative  is considered a “slow learner” where institutional maturity is concerned.  The Coop can barely prepare its monthly financial statement without SWCF’s assistance but part of its accomplishment was their 2011 Christmas project. The coop identified and gifted the ten poorest (non-coop members) families in their community with groceries.   In spite of the PO’s meager income, they put aside an amount from their general fund and added to it contribution from their own individual pockets to come up with substantial packets that included rice and other staples.  This was the first time that has ever happened in this community. Usually, this occurs only when there is death in somebody’s family.  Rizal is the poorest barangay in the town of Batuan. It has a culture reflective of its poverty. It is so used to dole outs, to asking, using poverty to justify the “my need first” attitude.  We have been working with this coop for the last 4 years.  Many times, our technicians thought of the unthinkable - “giving it up”.  But this little flash of generosity has given us hope.

In the last 24 years of development work, our beneficiaries often asked where we get our funds and why do people in other countries want to help people like them. “What do they get from helping strangers in other countries?” 

 My standard answer has always been –“people want to live in a safe, happy and peaceful neighborhood.  If we are surrounded by neighbors who are suffering and wanting, it would be hard to move forward and attain peace and prosperity.  The Aid that they receive comes from their global neighbors.  World peace and prosperity are achieved only when neighboring countries care for one another. This is how God wants His people to live.”

 Now I am just so thrilled to see that the actions you initiated more than two decades ago have produced mini- equivalents of your kindness and generosity.  We have now  local organizations that are seeing beyond their selves and are truly giving to their neighbors. POs that extended help beyond their members were mostly 7 years old or older. They are not a majority but this is a new beginning.  I like to believe that we will see more of them in the future.

AS a refresher course for you, here are learning’s gleaned from the Rotary-Assisted projects that SWCF still find useful in our project implementations:

Swine dispersal is still the fastest income generating activities of the PO.  Thanks to you and Bob, (black and white pigs) the practice has enabled many Boholano farmers to send their children to high school and college.  This practice now includes meat vending, where pig growers sell directly the meat to the community, using the coop as the middleman.  Grower makes more money, meat is affordable to the locals, and the coop makes little profit.  There is even a PO that put up a communal slaughter house in their barangay to make the slaughter sanitary.  

The Rotary funded project also introduced the livestock clinic.  This is now institutionalized in many communities in upland Bohol.  Farmers realized how productive their carabaos are when vaccinated and dewormed regularly. Now, trained farmer technicians do the deworming and vaccination.  The PO buys the medicines wholesale or gets them from the government agriculture office.  They charge a minimum fee for the service.

A Water system is not sustainable if it does not have good water system governance.  This was our lesson from the Rotary-assisted project in Cebu and Sagbayan, Bohol.  Most of the water systems established here in Bohol are governed by water-system management councils composed of representatives from the PO and local government.  Upland Cebu still suffers from disappearances of water sources during the summer.  This is worrying but it is still not in the priorities of the city government.

Forest Restoration was a major Rotary-funded project in central Cebu uplands.  The forest planted are still there, thanks to the Cebu Uniting for Sustainable Water (CUSW), they have taken over the area.  The group is not only maintaining it but is increasing the area of coverage, this time, using indigenous species.   Almost all SWCF projects in Bohol have a tree-growing component.  Biodiversity is given more focus.  We have farmers planting mother trees of rare native species in public schools to prevent its extinction.  We are also teaching them to monitor the wildlife in their communities especially the birds.   

Bill and I and the entire SWCF staff  consider ourselves privileged for allowing us to be instruments of your generosity.

Sincerely Yours,

Biall and Aida