Allan: Kalkal sa baul, a Canadian connection

TODAY, I found a letter I wrote February 9, 1989 in one of those old note books that are gaining dust and mold in the house.

Before I feed them to fire, I had a chance to look through and found a 30 year old letter I wrote to the Canadian Community College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The letter was a request for faculty and student exchange, donations in terms of books, equipment and technology exchange for BSBT Foundation Inc. located in Bontoc, Mt. Province.

BSBT Foundation Inc. sort of a CSR of BSBT College in Baguio.

It has a technical school, community development organizing work, community-based projects and network building initiatives for six years before we passed on the modules and technology to the local schools and communities. We were there in 1989 until 1994.

We never got any response from the community school, but we got funds for our projects from the Philippine Canadian Human Resource Development (PCHRD) a Canadian partnership with the Philippine government ODA.

It even went beyond that because I became the Northern Luzon representative of the PCHRD selection board after we were able to successfully implement our project from them.

And it was because I was part of the management committee of the Association of Foundations (AF) Northern Philippines and I was recommended to the PCHRD Board.

Our job was reviewing project proposals of other non-government organizations, people’s organization and church organization that are doing community-based projects in Northern Luzon.

My time with the Philippine Canadian group has broaden my exposure in various projects in Luzon in the likes of mangrove development, the livelihood program of earthquake victims, a community based pharmacy, a relending program for peasants and other similar projects.

These were community-based and usually include a capacity building for the beneficiaries to be able to increase technical skills to handle their own activities and organizations. These project components were to ascertain the sustainability of the projects after the funding period.

I returned to Baguio in 2000, that Bontoc experience has helped me as I because the Executive Director of Upland Development Institute (UDI).

During our time we implemented multi-million programs and projects in Cordillera Region.

We were having projects from Abra to Kalinga which were setting up community-based health centers coupled with trainings, capacity building trainings as well as health trainings.

Other projects were environmental responses, research on the indigenous life systems of the diminishing tribes and this gave me opportunity to re connect with those helped by the Canadian government decades ago.

As then the president of Soroptimist International 2012-2014, I had the opportunity to travel to Vancouver for the 4rd Biennium Convention of Soroptimist International of the Americas last July 2014.

It gave me an opportunity to visit family and relatives in Vancouver as well as meet Soroptimist who are based in Canada.

Sharon Fisher from Western Canada Region was again instrumental in securing funding for an outreach project for Nepal in June 2017.

Another decade and I am back in Baguio trying to do the same thing of community work but in a different arena and a different level but the principles remain and humanness considered.