Clearing house for nation building”

FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY
Ka Iking Seneres

In a recent meeting of the Corinthian Coffee Clutch (C3), we took the time to take stock and review what we have done in the past year, so that we could improve our ways of doing things. We realized that we have already helped many proponents of nation building, but we lacked a system of monitoring the progress of the proponents that we are helping. That is understandable, because we are really an informal gathering, and we are learning as we are going along.

There was a consensus that although we have already helped many proponents, we had no system of monitoring and reporting, and that is why we usually would not know what happened to the proponents that we have helped, and we would not also know what else they would need from us in addition to the help that we gave them earlier. There was also a feedback that some proponents went ahead and succeeded because of our help, but we did not even hear from them, not even a thank you note.

From the very start, we all agreed in C3 that we shall remain as an informal gathering, and we were not even planning to become a formal organization. We also agreed that we are not going to have projects of our own as a group, even if we would support individual members who would decide to have projects on their own. We decided not to have projects on our own so that we could focus on what we do best, and that is to be a clearing house of projects, while functioning as well as a think tank for nation building.

It was also necessary for us not to have projects on our own, so that we would not compete with the proponents who would come to us with their own projects. “NOT INVENTED HERE” (NIH) is a very prevalent syndrome in the government. You can see this syndrome happen in government agencies that are supposed to be helping outside proponents, but they often end up rejecting the proposals of outsiders, because these would conflict with the proposals of the insiders.

Their usual thinking is that the ideas of outsiders are not good enough for them, because if it was really good, they would have thought about it themselves, hence NIH.

Although we are just an informal gathering, we now find it necessary to go into a formal relationship with the proponents that we are helping. We really would not need voluminous legal documents, we will just sign ordinary letters of understanding, saying to the effect that they would agree to submit monthly written reports to us about the progress of their work, and in addition to that, for them to come back for a quarterly presentation to the group.

It was also agreed in the meeting that we will give priority preference to difficult cases such as orphan disorders, prisoner release and children in conflict with the law. The problem of orphan disorders was presented to us by the Philippine Society for Orphan Disorders (PSOD), headed by Dr. Cynthia Magdaraog. It is not about orphan children mind you, it is about children who are afflicted by rare diseases that are usually ignored by mainstream medicine, hence the term orphan.

The problem of prisoner release was presented to us by Mr. Rene de Jesus. Lastly, the problem of children in conflict with the law was presented to us by Ms. Mads Reyes.

However, we are not saying that we will forget about the easier cases that were presented to us. We are going to continue working along the thirteen basic needs that we have identified, all of which are in line with the integrated area development (IAD) approach, an approach that is in line with the human development index (HDI) means of development measurement, and the millennium development goals (MDGs).

Among other concerns, we are going to continue with our partnership with the national greening program (NGP). Our goal is to build new communities as a way towards nation building, by way of bringing the basic needs strategy (BNS) to the NGP sites, making sure that these new communities would benefit from the combination of IAD, HDI and MDG parameters. For feedback, email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639997333011