BusinessMirror

AFTER four straight decades of volunteerism in the Philippines’ rural communities, UK-based Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is ending its engagement here this month.

Malou Juanito, VSO Bahaginan executive director, said the program office of the international development organization VSO has completed its mission in the Philippines, culminating a legacy of global volunteerism to help alleviate poverty and aid the disadvantaged in the country.

“It is with great pride that VSO Philippines [VSOP] marks its 40 years in the country with a sense of accomplishment and completion,” said Juanito.

“The Philippines has been a major area of VSO’s development work, and we are closing on a high note the program office while VSO Bahaginan will continue and build on the work done by VSO all these years through national volunteering and capacity-building support,” Juanito added.

VSOP began operations in the 1970s just over a decade after its parent organization was established in the UK. In the past four decades, VSOP was actively involved in crucial social work in local communities, deploying volunteers to underdeveloped areas, taking up advocacies to raise public awareness of urgent social issues, and establishing partnerships with relevant agencies to achieve development goals.

In 2000 VSO established a recruitment base in the Philippines, VSO Bahaginan, aimed at tapping the rich pool of skills and expertise of Filipino volunteers. It now recruits, trains and deploys Filipino volunteers in more than 40 developing countries around the world, and is the only member of the VSO Federation in the Asia-Pacific region.

In recent years, VSOP has been actively involved in peace-building, livelihood generation and assisting people with disabilities. Since its initial work with deaf organizations in 1997, VSO expanded its program to a broad range of disabilities, with successful initiatives in Manila and Cebu. VSO remains the only international organization with an active program to aid those with disabilities in the country.

In livelihood generation, VSO volunteers with experience in strategic planning, business management, human-resource development and financial systems have achieved great success in helping local service agencies secure sustainable livelihood for people in coastal and rural communities in the country.

VSO has also been actively involved in peace-building in Mindanao since 2001, particularly in establishing healthy relations between Muslim and Christian communities and supporting the emotional and physical recovery of those affected by conflict.

“Ultimately, we can look back over the past four decades with great respect and admiration for all the VSO volunteers who have come to the Philippines and the local partners to get us where we are today,” said Juanito. “And we are very pleased to keep the spirit of volunteerism alive in the country and look forward to continue working alongside Filipino volunteers through VSO Bahaginan.”

On peace-building program

Romulo de la Rosa, program manager for peace-building of the VSO in the Philippines in Iligan City, said there at least 14 nongovernment-organization (NGO) partners in Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur, as well as the two cities of Iligan and Marawi.

The two Lanao provinces are the geographic focus of VSO’s peace program.

De la Rosa said that since 2001, the peace-building work of VSO in Mindanao involved providing support to grassroots peace-building initiatives through international volunteer placements, providing small grants, organizing local and international learning exchanges, and promoting cooperation and networking among NGOs.

“Peace-building programs of VSO partners in Lanao involve activities ranging from emotional recovery for traumatized conflict survivors, interfaith dialogues among Muslim and Christian communities, culture-of-peace seminars for youth, Muslim young professional volunteering, disaster management and conflict mediation. These activities are combined with livelihood projects, coastal-resource management, women empowerment and community-organizing work.”

The continuing armed conflict between government forces and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has left around 400,000 people homeless since January 2003, and over 120,000 people have lost their lives over the past 30 years.

Around 10 percent of the affected communities come from the Lanao provinces.

They cited among key factors fueling violence are the disputes over land and other natural resources, biases and mistrust between Muslims and Christians, and a culture of violence, including the presence of individuals and groups that profit economically from it and have a stake in ensuring that conflict continues.

“Continuing conflict has exacerbated the already-desperate situation of poverty in Mindanao. In 2003 alone, the outbreak of war between rebel and government forces displaced close to half a million people in the two Lanao provinces.

“Land conflict in Lanao was the spark that led to the conflagration of war in 2001,” VSO Philippines said.

On securing livelihood programs

Many rural and coastal communities in the Philippines rely heavily on natural resources as a way to earn a living, but overuse of these resources and poor farming and fishing techniques mean they are rapidly being depleted, VSO said.

Volunteers with marine, forestry and agricultural skills are working with communities and agencies to encourage more sustainable and safe farming and fishing methods, train local people in alternative ways to earn a living, and encourage groups of individuals to work together on business enterprises.

Volunteers with experience in strategic planning, business management, human-resource development and financial systems are working with local service agencies to ensure they operate as efficiently as possible.

Disability program

Discrimination, misinformation, negative attitudes and superstitions regarding disability have been major barriers to the development of disabled people, observed VSO. Since 1997 both hearing and deaf volunteers have been working with groups working for the deaf, and VSO is currently the only international volunteering organization working in this area in the Philippines. The work of these volunteers has addressed a number of issues, including the denial of abuse in deaf society, the lack of educational resources for the deaf, lack of basic primary health care, and poor understanding of basic “life” skills among the deaf.

From 2005 VSOP expanded the program to work with a broader range of disabilities while, at the same time, focusing on the core issues of limited access, failure to implement rights, capacity- building and mainstreaming among volunteers in the other program areas.

The program is focused primarily in the cities of Manila and Cebu, where voluteers work with a small number of active and purpose-driven groups formed and run by the disabled. Recently, volunteers have been assisting with handicraft manufacture from recycled materials, small-enterprise-development advice, organizational development, marketing, resource mobilization and advocacy through the media.

Lawyer Grizelda Mayo-Anda, of Environmental Legal Action Center (Elac) in Palawan, said Palawan province was one of the beneficiaries of the VSO Philippines program on disability and coastal-resource management.

The Palawan Center for Rural Technology had worked with VSO volunteers that concentrated on the coastal town of Roxas and the island municipality of Dumaran.

Anda said there was also a two-year program on coastal-resource management in Coron, Palawan, with Elac as partner-NGO.