GTF – 222
“Institutionalising Local and National Partnerships to Address Urban Poverty and Homelessness in the Philippines”
Partnership of Philippine Support Service Agencies
The third year of programme implementation (April 108 – March 31, 2009) is an interesting time for governance and transparency work in the Philippines, marked with challenges and opportunities.
In that period, we had national and local elections. And in this election, graft and corruption had been drummed up as a major political issue. So this is an opportunity to promote good governance and enhanced transparency in the political debates, in the voters’ education, and in community discussions.
But the politically-charged atmosphere throughout the country demands a careful analysis of the situation, cautious engagement with candidates and political groups, and principled campaign to bring to the fore concern for governance and transparency, alongside gut issues of urban poverty and homelessness.
The programme had to make the delicate act of balancing these concerns in maximising opportunities and spaces for engagement that the elections offered.
We continued with the strengthening of community organisations and capacity-building of grassroot leaders. We continued with engaging with local and national government officials in accessing basic services and exploring solutions to problems of tenurial and income security. We continued with planning and initiating innovative projects on the ground in partnership with other stakeholders.
Alongside this, we facilitated a process among the urban poor community leaders of formulating an urban poor agenda and a concept of leadership that was used in assessing candidates, especially for President and Vice-President. With this, the leaders discussed their agenda with candidates until they finally decided to support then candidates, Benigno Aquino III and Mar Roxas, forging a Covenant for the Urban Poor with them.. At the same time, voters’ education called “Boto Ko, Sagrado” (My Vote is Sacred) was conducted among the urban poor communities to discourage the rampant selling of votes.
After the elections, the urban poor leaders is maximising opportunities in the Aquino government to push for their agenda.
The past year was also a time of increasing awareness and concern for disaster risk reduction and management as many urban poor communities, especially those living near rivers and waters had been experiencing flooding and other calamities and had been threatened by local government with forced eviction with no concrete plans for resettling affected families
On the ground, local partnerships are being strengthened to discuss and evolve innovative strategies for tenurial security and access to social services. Various models and systems for settlement planning, building technologies and socialised financing schemes are being tried to promote secure, safe and sustainable urban communities.
