Global Research Assembly

Chicago HDP 9
July 4, 1979

Last August, I had the opportunity to go through India and participate in the Maliwada Human Development Training School for two weeks. I had the chance to sit down with the "Blue Shirts" one afternoon while the directors had a meeting and it became very clear that one needed to participate in the great experiment that was going on in Maliwada to anticipate what are its futuric implications. On getting back to the Philippines we began to raise the question of alternative models in which you would deal with society ­ all of society, all of the people and all of the geography.

The island of Mactan is an island off the bigger island of Cebu. Until fifteen years ago, it was an island of sleepy fishing villages. Then, a bridge was built and an international airport. The island has been catapulted into the 20th century in a period of only fifteen years. By August, there will be a flight that originates from the island to Peking. That is how radical the changes have been. They now have a free trade zone where foreign multi­nationals can come and set up their factories for export purposes. The city of Davao, where Langub is located, is one of the largest cities in the world in terms of land area. The two­pronged development of the city pushes on either side of a mountain range where there are no services at all. The development plans do not touch this area for the next twenty years. That is where our mountain cluster project is located.

Our initial step in creating a model for doing several projects at the same time was to look at the situation. There are three regions in the Philippines. In Cebu, the actuation of the Sudtonggan Human Development Project has been the first phase of the cluster experiment. The first model we drafted is called the Anchorwheel. It starts with the existing project and locates four other villages, preferably one close by, one far away, and two that would cover the geography to the sides. The design called for people from those four villages to come to a Human Development Training School in Sudtonggan and return to their villages to create the structures through which those four villages would work together. The second model was similar, but in it there were no auxiliary staying in these four villages. The cluster experiment would be coordinated from the existing project. We decided to experiment with Langub as the center project in the second cluster model. The third model was designed to enable a cluster in an area where there is not an existing project. It is like the other models in that it begins with four villages and sends representatives to the Training School. They return to their villages and work together with a circuit team from a house or project visiting on a regular basis. They work with the cluster of four villages from the anchor of a fifth project. This third model is called the Spinning Wheel model.

The three regions, Cebu, Davao and Manila decided to focus on Mactan and activate the Mactan Master Cluster model first. Davao, because of that Anchorbase model decided that the signal focus in the Mountain Cluster was economic development. The image was that anybody in the mountain cluster involved in the project could get enough money to pay for membership in the Davao Country Club if he so desired. To enable that we are designing the Mountain Cluster Human Development Corporation. There are many stories that go with that. For example, this month they are planting the seedlings for 800 cacao trees. Cacao has a very profitable market as it is the source of chocolate. It is a large scale program which will impact the total mountain area forcefully.

In the Manila region, we decided to capitalize on the image of the Metro Aids. There are even street sweepers with t­shirts which say "Metro Aides," in one of the parts of the human settlements program­. We decided to create the "Metro Blue Shirts,"- Blue Shirts that come from the city. Companies are already in conversation with us about sending some of their young personnel to be in one of the projects for a year. University students in their third year from local universities and colleges are interested in the cluster experiment, and we hope to do a training school for the Metropolitan Blue Shirts. After training, they might serve one year in one of the cluster projects. Those are the three focuses of the three Regions. The Master Cluster is actually combining the three plans in one project cluster. Mactan has created the Mactan Cluster which includes Sudtonggan and four other villages.

In the first month the actuation task forces consisting of the "Blue Shirts" and villagers did a massive community forum campaign across the island. After the Assembly the "Blue Shirts" began to decide which four villages were close enough to each cluster village to work cooperatively following the community forums. Some of them are already participating. They come to San Miguel for training and they have already established a preschool program in their community as a result of the forum and their relationship to San Miguel. This next quarter we plan to host another school that will take villagers from those sixteen communities to do sixteen other projects in Mactan.

We have been surprised by some of the responses. Two governmental offices have approached us. One is the National Economic and Development Agency which funded our community forum. They want us to do four other projects in a watershed location where they are working and do it without having to have auxiliary on location. We would assist with the community forums, the training, the holding of the consult, and the writing of the document. Then we would withdraw and be in a consultant relationship to the agency assisting them in linking with the services of existing governmental agencies. This would be one of the Spinning Wheel Clusters Model. In the next training school we anticipate twenty villages will be sending representatives to prepare themselves for consults in January.

Mr. Robert McNamara of the World Bank came to Manila to address the United Nations Trade and Development Conference. He brought along with him a man who has seen our work in Maharastra. They are funding thirty­five villages in Ilio Ilio where we have had some community forums and from where some people had come to the last training school. They want us, within a five year timeline, to do those thirty­five villages using the Mactan Cluster Model. That is one, then four, then sixteen, then thirty­five villages over a five year period. So from one project, without increasing staff personnel and without moving personnel, you could actually do a minimum of twenty and a maximum of thirty­six projects.

What are the implications of the cluster experiment? First, when I was in Maharastra, I was not terrified of the figure of 232 villages. I was terrified over the figure of 2,500!­ Let us apply the cluster model to the 232 human development projects already in operation. If you can do a minimum of twenty each, and you multiply that, you have more than 4000 projects possible in the state of Maharastra. I am no longer worried about doing 2,500 projects in Maharastra. The second implication is for those of us located in metropolitan areas and needing to do a project; the Spinning Wheel Model is a model that might be considered. We will be working on that this coming year. We have not really worked on the rest, but from our work on the other two, we feel confident that it is a workable model. The third implication is that the community forum campaign is an integral part of the cluster experiment. You can not do the cluster experiment without doing the project and the community forums together. The site selection, training of troops, and the massive coverage of the geography where the cluster villages are located requires community forum. It is an integral part of the life and the training of the "Blue Shirts." The fourth implication is that we have begun to have a relationship different from village to village. When the Langub Mountain Cluster was initiated, the people from the Mactan Cluster went down there to help another cluster. It is not first one Human Development Project relating to another Human Development Project; it is one cluster relating to another cluster. That is very powerful in terms of your story as well as the practical image of how you do geography. You do not get caught on the image of one village in the midst of 2000 villages. There is one cluster enabling other clusters. Participating in the cluster experiment has been very clearly within the context of doing it on behalf of the globe. What sustained the school, the auxiliary and the "Blue Shirts" is that from the very beginning, the Philippine Cluster Experiment was designed with futuric intentions relative to all the projects around the world. This is an experiment on behalf of all.

Global Research Assembly July 4, 1979

Chicago ­ HDP ­ 10

I will report on the happening of this past year in the experiment of village clustering in the Philippines It is hard to talk about how the model came about, because it is basically the result of an empirical method of finding out exactly what the next steps should be in the midst of facing a challenge head on. It represents a one year model of a journey that we actually traveled and it is the product of tremendous input from many people in Area Manila and Continent SEAPAC

The first step was site selection, which began in October. We were looking for a way to "walk out of " Sudtonggan without really walking out. Sudtonggan, we knew, was finished, and had been for a long time in many ways. We told the people that we were no longer going to worry about Sudtonggan, nor should anybody else, because all of us in Sudtonggan were going to go out and do four more villages. To turn a village inside out, away from itself, is a terrible, painful experience after living in it as a project for three years. After that amount of time and expenditure, the local stakes and guilds are all that people think about. It was a phenomenal experience for Sudtonggan to go out and select other villages to become human development signs.

We made this shift a little too dramatically. In January our house burned down! That was one way to work a new beginning, though I would not recommend it. The fire happened during one consult, so the shift was doubly dramatic, as all of the consultants were there to witness it. It was a great experience to select four villages and begin to stand present to the possibilities that could happen. It really was not too difficult, because they all knew about Sudtonggan. Most of them had, in the past, asked us how they could do all the things that Sudtonggan was doing: getting and developing new industries. We always told them that we were working in a delimited geographic area and we could not go outside until one village became a demonstration. Because they had witnessed the demonstration in Sudtonggan, site selection was not much of an issue.

In November, we held the Human Development Training School with 10 villagers from each of the new villages in attendance. We also had the whole village of Sudtonggan through the school. It was a dramatic event for those people to figure out, in the midst of their own village, what from the programmatic chart they would replicate in each of the other villages and how they would do it. There were three major industries in Sudtonggan and we decided the buri industry was the one most appropriate to replicate. We had to figure out how we could develop a market four times the present size. We had to figure out how we could train people, get the tools, get the capital to set it up and build the buildings. Fortunately, the people who were buying our products agreed that they would do the whole thing.

In December, we began the Consult preparation. Can you imagine being a project director and being faced with implementing a Human Development Training School and preparing for a consult in the space of two months? I must admit we had tremendous back­up systems. The faculty who came for the training school were just jewels. In fact, the whole design for the time from October through July was a corporate decision. At every point, we hammered out the decisions about how this experiment could be applicable globally.

In January, we held the consults. We used what we called a one, one, two model. We did one consult in one village, one consult in another village, and then we did two consults simultaneously. We had 40 people in blue shirts on the road continuously going to one village after another. Then we split into two groups of twenty and each did two villages. At that point, the decision to actually do the villages was an awesome one. In February, we did the task forces. This involved selecting the four key programs to be initially done and doing them through a rotating taskforce dynamic. We had to make a decision at that point, about whether we were going to establish auxiliary and live on site. Having the people on site was a major decision in the cluster village. Finally we sent out our project directors with ten blue­clad villagers to be the auxiliary in the village. It was quite an experience for the project directors to have to move into a village with ten villagers and decide to do that whole village. We experienced difficulty, but we decided at the end of that first month that it was a great experience and we would recommend it.

It was an extremely difficult challenge to actualize the programs. We found it was helpful to put people on task forces. We had one task force working with the pre­schools and we sent them to all four villages, and they started pre­school. Another task force dealt with economics and all they did was establish buri industries. However, in the midst of employing the task forces we experienced a loss of corporate power. Therefore, the next month, we decided to pull them back into Sudtonggan and have them commute to their villages. They spent eight hours out in the villages on their job and then they came back in to report and reflect on the maneuver that they were engaged in. This re­maneuver helped us regain our corporate power. In the midst of all this we did the 222 Forums.

In April we decided that we needed to take the program chart­the economic, the social and the corporate patterns­and make each one of those elements a major maneuver in which all of the villages participated together. Part of the power of the cluster event is that five villages which have been moving together actually come together in a particular location. I want to read you a short paragraph which describes what happened at the end of the economic maneuver which was a cluster event.

"By 7:30 am on Sunday a number of Jeepneys arrived at the training center in Sudtonggan from the other four villages. They delivered what seemed to be thousands of people dressed in blue, white, red, green, brown and yellow t­shirts. The sound system began to play marching tunes and residents from the five villages entered along with representatives from Mindanao. The participants of the training school formed in Olympic style. Each village was identified by a banner­size grid and marched in review before the others. The awesome nature of the event was obvious to all for all of this had happened in just six months. A flurry of announcements were directed toward the crowd indicating the two locations of activity for the morning as, the basketball court in Stake V and the Training School Volley Ball Court in State III. A quick switch was arranged when it was discovered that the new asphalt on the Stake I court was still wet from the previous day's work. The frantic last minute team practices attracted great audiences. Audience participation began even before the matches began. By lunch time, people were more than ready for food and gathered at the food booths where people wearing blue shirts were selling low priced rice and hot dogs and enough soft drinks to satisfy everyone's thirst. The championship match of the village basketball teams was scheduled immediately after wards on the now dry Stake I court. People ate and gathered for the game until there was a huge crowd of over a thousand (the total attendance that day was over 4000). The match was tensely exciting and the momentum of the game sent everyone to the afternoon games and contests in a mood of high expectation. There ensued a tug­of­war between teams of the 'Rock­cutters', there was the 'Crochet Industry Fashion Parade', a watermelon eating contest and a beer drinking contest. (The preparation for this event was really phenomenal) The competitions were all conducted with cheers and encouraging yells, more laughing and shouting of advice. The handicraft and brewery buildings were both opened up so people could view displays between events. Finally, that night, a great celebration was staged in Stake Four attended by the Regional Department of Youth Directorate who judged the village singing and dancing contests. Prizes were given to the winning teams from the day's competition by the President of Sudtonggan's Board of Directors. This was followed by flashing bulbs, handshakes and dancing far into the night. The victory had been won".

That was the end of a one­month maneuver on the economic. We recently completed another called the "Bionic Vitality Month" which focused on the area of health. For the month­end celebration we had a beauty contest, a fattest baby contest and a fattest person contest. In the midst of these events the meaning of human vitality in the village was raised. In July, the focus is Corporate Patterns. The ending celebration will be a Feast of Beginnings.

Remaining issues include how we are going to be out by July for we are insisting that these villages be totally self­supporting by then. The function of the village auxiliaries and how they are supported is another. We start out with a stipend base for them and slowly reduce it by 10 pesos a month until by July they are totally self­supporting. We called the stipend a training salary which allowed them to participate in the industries or in one of the social programs supported by the industries. If we can make this arrangement work it will be phenomenal.