the development worker

I was a NGO worker.  I was very proud I was one.    It’s not because I’m now rich because of this.  Far from it, in fact, I gave up opportunities to secure a stable financial future when I opted to take on this career.  My late mom, who practically sought me out for a day to hand me the telegram, was surely disappointed when I turned down a management trainee offer from the RFM, which I did not solicit in the first place, and stuck to being an organizational staff of the Alyansa ng Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luzon (AMGL) for my first job in 1987.  It’s not the typical job that most workers know for I didn’t receive a regular salary and other perks that a regular job offers; only allowances for my transportation fares, simple meals, cigarettes—the cost of one pack of Champion cigarettes per day when I smoked at least a pack of Marlboros at that time—and other basic personal needs when I travelled around Central Luzon to attend meetings and conduct consultations with member organizations.   

Moreover, instead of hooking up with the more conservative NGOs that were funded by big business and offered competitive salaries to their workers, I had chosen to get involved with the more progressive NGOs that were overtly anti-status quo and, therefore, were not as financially endowed and, as a result, could only offer nickels and dimes to their workers.  This early decision in my professional life has made me financially dependent on my wife today and would likely stay so throughout my remaining days on planet Earth, as the likelihood of embarking on and pursuing a late-life second career after I’m through with my care giving responsibilities to my father seems far-fetched and ambitious.  

This sense of pride is not also because this has made me famous and brought me national prominence and respect, which can compensate for not being rich.  This had neither given me public acclaim nor media exposure, not even the kind that I experienced as a student at the Gregorio Araneta University Foundation (GAUF) in early 1987.  As the student council president, I was one of the more high profiled and “exposed” leaders of the multi-sector group—students, faculty members, employees and alumni—that demanded the ouster of the university president for being the spearhead in what we alleged as the deliberate mismanagement of GAUF.  (See my earlier blog  ”the noble bastard son” for more on this)  As such, I was the one being interviewed by reporters from the national dailies and radio stations that covered our barricades and, especially, our hunger strikes until our demands were met.   These media exposures were my five minutes of fame, so to speak, as my pictures together with that of the editor-in-chief of the student publication that remained steadfast in our hunger strikes were flashed in the front pages of at least a national broadsheet and my voice was heard regularly from some major radio stations.  Some people, of course, would not call this fame but infamy especially the conservatives—reactionary forces as we called them then as national democrats—and a number in the university community whose sympathies lied with the status quo and the ousted president, respectively.

This too, in a way, became my badge to gain entry and have a glimpse of the insides of the Malacaňan Palace, the Administrative Building in particular, when the employees’ and faculty unions’ presidents and I were summoned by a palace functionary tasked to mediate the resolution of the nearly two-month barricades of the multi-sector group and the more than 20-day hunger strikes of selected student leaders as public clamour mounted for President Cory to step into the fray.  Years before, as demonstrators, we were never able to set even a single foot inside the palace to air our grievances but there I was inside Malacaňang negotiating with a government official.  The farthest that we did in the past was set foot at the foot of the historic Mendiola Bridge.  That was the first of a couple more visits when I attended palace-sponsored conferences of student council and youth leaders, some of whom would later on occupy high government posts—one became a senator and another an education department undersecretary.

The pride and gratification that I got from being a NGO worker simply came from the belief that I took part in some important democratic struggles particularly of the poor and disenfranchised rural people while I was struggling on my own to meaningfully take part in the raising of my two daughters.  The importance of my work was articulated best by Lim Teck Gee, 1988 (cited in Mahar Mangahas, 31 August 2013) who wrote that NGOs “see their work as explicitly situated in the context of a wider concern for progressive social development and change in the society . . . [T]heir main concern really is with all the various groups and classes found in the society and with the wider social processes.”  To take part in this, however, my wife has practically borne most of the brunt in raising our kids, which extends even to this day. 

The source of this self-importance, though, is now being undermined, to a certain extent, by news of some NGOs’ complicity in the scheme of the now infamous Janet Lim-Napoles that allegedly fleeced the rural poor of vital resources that could have helped to bail them out from abject poverty and hunger.  I cannot fault the uninitiated and those not in the know to conclude that most, if not all, NGOs operate like the ones that Napoles allegedly organized to perpetrate her ruse.  This was figuratively just the icing on the cake as it immediately followed the news of a more progressive—more ideological, too, I supposed—NGO organized by former (or did they remain?) national democrats, which was able to source funds from the USAID among other funding agencies was found to have misused them by the American conduit of US official development assistance (ODA) in the Philippines.  This though did not merit the same prominence in print and electronic media.  Maybe the sum involved was a pittance when ranged to that of the Pork Barrel Queen and it was not the Filipino but American taxpayers’ money.  I will not be surprised, therefore, if somebody someday will go to the extent of asking for some “balato” from all the money s/he’ll assume I’ve illegally made just like Napoles.

 On hindsight, though, I, myself, could have made some retirement money and be more financially independent had I shared the same values and orientation of Napoles.  Of course, the money I could have made will surely not be as mind-boggling as that of Napoles but will certainly allow me to indulge more frequently some simple luxuries which my public school principal-wife showers me with every now and then. 

In 1992, I and practically all the leading field- and office-based staff left the NGO we worked for and formed one of our own.  The former was the first development NGO I joined in 1991 since I started my development work with militant peasant organizations in 1987.  The initial reaction of those in the know was to dismiss ours as an off-shoot of the rift within the communist party and the national democratic movement; a simple case of reaffirmists (RA) versus rejectionists (RJ).  But this was far from the truth; it was just mere coincidence that the core in my group also rejected—thus, the term rejectionists—the thesis advanced by the mainstream communist party and its satellite organizations in the National Democratic Front on how to continue and correctly pursue the national democratic revolution in the midst of the series of major debacles suffered by the movement.  The real cause of our particular split was the deliberate deviation from the original mandated strategic role of that NGO in the overall national democratic change we all aspired and, more importantly, the corruption—financial opportunism was the term used in the movement—of the executive director.  The movement did not allow the ouster of the executive director but allowed our group to set up our own NGO and promised us Php250,000 “separation pay” for this. 

Although only Php125,000 of the promised “separation pay” was given, we still  set up a NGO with practically the same vision, missions, goals and strategies (VMGS) as we promised.  With this start-up capital and the initial USD10,000—exchange rate then was only Php26:USD1—we sourced from a Swiss Lenten group, we started our operations and proceeded with our project development and resource mobilization.  Simultaneous with the implementation of the Swiss-funded one-year community organizations strengthening and development in barangays (villages) that suffered the most from the mine tailings-induced degradation of the Agno River in Bayambang, Pangasinan, we were able to come out with a program proposal on how to comprehensively and holistically addressed the environmental degradation along the Agno River as well as smaller project proposals on our development interactions with the Aetas that survived the Mount Pinatubo eruption in Cabangan, Zambales.  We also acted as the secretariat of the newly organized Buklod ng Malayang Magbubukid (BUKLOD).

However, even with all the help we could muster, including ones outside the country, we could not raise the needed resources to pursue our projects and programs in line with our VMGS.  After more than a couple of years of existence, the Swiss Lenten group remained the only source of our NGO’s fund.  It was not because our programs and projects were not good and were ill-conceived.   Ms Laura Kern(?), sister-in-law of former Senator Rene Saguisag, who was mobilized by Fil-Am Washington State Representative Velma Veloria to help in raising fund for our Pangasinan program considered  our proposal much better than most of the proposals she reviewed for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as a consultant.  I’d heard a similar comment from the treasurer of our Board of Trustees (BOT), who reviewed some of the proposals of peasant-based national democratic NGOs prior to 1992 before these were endorsed to European and other funding agencies.  Both concluded that our failure to get funds for our programs and projects was our NGO’s lack of tract record. 

It was at this juncture that another BOT member had come in contact with a “broker” that solicited Php5-million project proposals to be submitted to the Department of Agriculture for funding under its Agricultural Competitive Enhancement Fund (ACEF).  The catch was, only Php3-million will be forwarded to the project proponent (NGO); the remaining Php2-million will go to the broker’s group who facilitated the approval.  As the executive director of our NGO, this was brought to my attention and was told to prepare as many as two project proposals within the declared objectives of the fund.  ACEF was created under Republic Act No. 8178 that was enacted in July 1995 and was popularly known as the “Agricultural Tariffication Act”, which “basically seeks to raise farm productivity and reduce costs by providing necessary support services such as, irrigation, farm-to-market roads, post-harvest facilities, credit, research and development, extension services, market infrastructure and information”.  (Yorobe, 2005)

The offer was tempting.  The Php6-million that we’ll get from the Php10-million total costs for two projects would surely have gone a long way in our NGO’s operations and establishment of tract record.  I remembered how were able to stretch the first USD10,000 extended by the Swiss Lenten group to cover almost two years of our operations by saving on some expenses without sacrificing the quality of our outputs and jeopardizing the extension of another fund for project continuity from the Swiss.  More importantly, this amount could have helped prevented the departure of the staff to more decent paying NGOs and the private sector.

In the end, though, I decided not to take the offer.  This would not only tie me up and, at least, another staff to practically manufacture receipts for the Php4-million that will go to the broker and his group.  Furthermore, we won’t be able to leave our seats to take even a breather from this task had we also decided to take our own cuts from this fund to fatten our own pockets.  The more weighty reason was my inability to accept the fact that by taking part in this highly fraudulent and immoral scheme; a regular fixture in the bureaucracy it now appears.  Granting that we won’t be lining our pockets from this, the mere fact that you took part in this dubious scheme was not only your imprimatur of support to a very corrupt system but, more importantly, a betrayal of the very people whom you professed to fight for.

In the end, too, we’d decided to close shop.  This was after realizing that it was not only very difficult for new and fledgling but legitimate NGOs to avail funding from the usual foreign development agencies but also from the government.  On my end, I opted to offer my services to other NGOs that I still perceived to be true in their avowal to uphold and fight for the genuine democratic rights and welfare of the poor and marginalized in Philippine society.  That, in the end, was what this pride was all about. (30)