MEDIOS A UTILIZAR EN LA CAMPAÑA DE PUBLICIDAD

As mentioned in Sub-section 2.7.2, the three case study settlement development organizations selected for the case study are: (1) Gawad Kalinga, (2) Homeless People’s   Federation   of   the   Philippines,   Inc.   (HPFPI),   and   (3)   TAO-Pilipinas.

Although some of them partner with government (especially GK), all are non-governmental organizations that arguably pursue more community-based, participatory settlement development approaches that are akin to CBA principles.

This section outlines their individual approaches to settlement development among the urban poor in Metro Manila to provide a foundational understanding upon which the practice of CBA is evaluated in Chapter 7.

6.1.1 Case 1 – Gawad Kalinga

Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, more commonly known as Gawad Kalinga or GK, is a non-governmental and membership-based organization that  is  based  in  the  Philippines  and  its  name  translates  in  Filipino  as  ‘to  give  care’.  

Gawad   Kalinga’s   main   goal   is   nation   building   through   poverty   alleviation,   and   it originated from the work of Couples for Christ (CFC) a faith-based development organization that had approximately 10-15 years development experience in the Philippines before Gawad Kalinga was created. GK has multiple programmes including social enterprise, child and youth development (i.e. education), health,

environment, and food sufficiency, but they first started their work with social (trans)formation and shelter improvement through teaching biblical principles and in-situ upgrading through volunteerism. The concept of building new houses, which was subsequently introduced, is represented by their Community Infrastructure Program  (CIP).    GK’s  first home was built in 1999 in Metro Manila and as of 2008, GK has built 1,700 villages and approximately 30,000 homes in both urban and rural areas of the Philippines.

Gawad Kalinga represents a settlement development organization that is well established and has been highly successful in accomplishing resettlement and slum-upgrading among poor communities in the Philippines. So much so that the government has recognized its housing development model as a reliable and replicable approach that they can partner to address the housing needs of the urban poor nationwide. Up until now GK has partnered with over 150 mayors and other institutions including Harvard, Yale and UCLA Public Health. (GK, 2011) In fact one of the case study communities of GK, Sitio Pajo, was recently developed in partnership with Quezon City government. In the case of Sitio Pajo, the government developed the site by building roads, upgrading bridges, and providing key service infrastructure, meanwhile GK organized the community and designed and financed (through benefactors) the construction of housing and community buildings. There is also talk about GK partnering with national government in order to facilitate the process of resettling ISFs from danger areas within Metro Manila, as part of the President’s  5-year Resettlement Programme (N6; as discussed in Chapter 5).

Gawad  Kalinga’s  model  for  building  houses  is  based  on  the  premise that: (1) GK will organize   the   community   through   an   initiative   called   ‘Values   Formation’   and   will   finance the housing with funding from both local and overseas benefactors, meanwhile (2) the community will provide the sweat equity and united commitment to build the houses and (3) the government or another actor will provide the land,

which can either be donated or purchased by the community under the Community Mortgage Program (CMP)⁶⁰. Typically the community organization and house building is completed within 2-5 years. To carry this out, GK depends significantly upon the volunteerism of professional architects and engineers among others to provide design input to their CIP, meanwhile it has city and area coordinators who are employed for the overall supervision and implementation of its CIP projects. In regards to the environment, GK has commenced  an  initiative  called  ‘Green  Kalinga’  

which aims  to  sensitise  GK’s  work  to  the  environment,  and  includes  an  awareness  of   climate change and seeking to incorporate mitigation and adaptation strategies into its settlement development or CIP programmes. Overall, although   GK’s   work   is   embedded with poor communities their model is quite top-down and less community-led compared to other grassroots initiatives. Thus GK may be likened to a parent to the poor communities that invite it to partner with them; at first it starts off with quite a strong directional role, but over time it gradually loosens the control as the community matures and takes on responsibility.

6.1.2 Case 2 – Homeless  People’s  Federation  of  the  Philippines, Inc.

The second case study organization is The Homeless   People’s   Federation   of   the   Philippines, Inc. (HPFPI). HPFPI is not an NGO itself, but a  “national  federation of urban poor community and homeowners’  associations  which  self  organize,  develop,   and initiate secure tenure thrusts  through  community  savings”  (Rayos Co, 2006). It is the only affiliate of SDI in the Philippines and receives technical support from the NGO  ‘Philippine Action for Community-led Shelter Initiatives, Inc.’ (PACSII)⁶¹ and general   support   from   its   NGO   partner   the   ‘Vincentian   Missionaries   Social   Development   Foundation,   Inc.’   (VMSDFI);;   together they form the Philippine Alliance, which is based in Quezon City (Ibid.; VMSDFI, 2001). The Philippine

60 For  a  brief  explanation  of  the  National  Government’s  Community  Mortgage  Program  (CMP)  refer  to  the  Glossary.

61 PACSII   grew   out   of   the   ‘Vincentian   Missionaries   Social   Development   Foundation,   Inc.’ in 1992. This church-based organisation supported the first community savings groups in an area called Payatas in Quezon City. “These   groups, in other words HPFPI, have since encouraged and assisted groups in other parts of the city and country to mobilise  around  issues  of  land  and  housing.“  (HI,  2011)

Alliance is active in 33 cities across the Philippines and incorporates over 85,000 people in 200 communities, yet autonomy still remains with the individual associations (ACHR, 2011; HI, 2011).

According  to  Homeless  International  it  assists  “the most vulnerable groups within the population of the urban poor, for example, communities living in high-risk conditions on land susceptible to natural and man-made disasters or those under the threat of eviction”  (HI, 2011). Consequently, HPFPI is made up of communities that live in precarious environments and experience disasters such as floods and landslides. One of  HPFPI’s  first  involvements  in  housing  was  in  1997-1998 when one of its groups – the Payatas Scavengers Homeowners Association – “decided   to   directly   purchase their  own  land”  in  Montalban  in  order  to  provide  safe  housing  for  their  families  who   were living on and around Payatas Waste Dump Site in Quezon City (Teodoro &

Rayos Co, 2009, p. 426). This decision to relocate was emphasized in 2000 by the Payatas Trashslide tragedy in which 270 people were killed (Teodoro & Rayos Co, 2009). This is discussed further under PSHAI, one of the HPFPI case study communities (see Section 6.2).

HPFPI’s  community-led  development  process  involves  “land acquisition, community upgrading and house construction, disaster management and partnership with local governments”,  and  its  core  strategy  to  achieve  these  is  through community-managed savings (ACHR, 2011). These savings can be in the form of a revolving community fund   and   are   seen   as   a   means   to   build   “the   financial   capability of communities to invest  in  their  own  development”  and  act  “as  disaster  mitigation  /  preparedness  tools”  

(Teodoro & Rayos Co, 2009, p. 422 and 436; VMSDFI, 2001). A main reason for HPFPI’s  increasing  incorporation  and  documentation  of  community-driven DRR and DRM strategies has stemmed from the Philippines susceptibility to climate shocks.

As Carcellar  and  others  state,  “The  successive  onslaught  of  disasters  in  recent  years   has highlighted the multiple vulnerabilities of poor communities in times of natural or

even human-induced   calamities”,   yet   these   have   also   “brought   out   the   inherent   strength of communities  to  …  create  local  learning  [from  their  experience],  which  can   be used in designing community-driven  DRR  interventions”  (2011, p. 368). In short the way that HPFPI through the Philippine Alliance addresses the vulnerabilities of poor communities   “fuels   and   sustains   the   community-driven initiatives in disaster response  and  risk  reduction”  (Ibid.)

One key difference between GK and HPFPI, is that the latter does not provide housing for free to its Federation members. Rather it provides the paralegal training, housing design support and financing mechanisms through which its members can organize their own settlement development, be that through on-site upgrading or relocation, in a more community-based approach. This means that the process of house construction is typically more incremental over a longer-time period and also housing designs are more varied, as often although the community buys the land corporately individual families are in charge of building their homes. One particular financing mechanism that HPFPI make use of is CLIFF (see Sub-section 5.2.2). This facility aims to provide sustainable and affordable loans to communities and its members for site upgrading and house construction, among other things. (HI, 2013;

Morris & Malcolm, 2007)

6.1.3 Case 3 – TAO-Pilipinas

TAO-Pilipinas is the third case study organization of this research. It is younger than GK and HPFPI and was founded by Arlene Christy and Faith Varona – two Filipina architects – in 2000. Also based in Quezon City in Metro Manila, TAO-Pilipinas is a Technical Assistance NGO, which uses expertise in architecture, planning and engineering as a basis to improve the housing of the urban poor through community-based design solutions and training. It partners with SELAVIP (a Belgium-founded housing fund for the urban poor, which operates out of Chile); MISEREOR (a German development agency, which focuses on fighting poverty); and ACHR (a

regional network of actors involved in urban poor development) to achieve its goal to support the urban poor and young professionals in achieving sustainable human settlement development (TAO-Pilipinas, 2013d). At the centre of TAO-Pilipinas’  

work are four core programmes: human settlements and environment; education and training both for urban poor organizations and young professionals in architecture, planning and engineering; research and publications principally on the topic of sustainable human settlement development; and organization, networking and advocacy (TAO-Pilipinas, 2013b). Of primary interest to this research is therefore their programme on human settlements and environment, which not only provides technical support to urban poor organizations, LGUs and NGOs in human settlement development planning, development and management, but also encourages community-based management processes and engages with government at the barangay level in the implementation of community-based projects (Ibid.). TAO-Pilipinas’   “first   official   involvement   was   with   informal   settlements   affected   by   the   Pasig   River   Rehabilitation   Program   in   Metro  Manila”   during   which  they   facilitated  

“the   approval   of an on-site   community   development   plan”.     This   plan   was   a   significant   victory   “against   the   medium-rise housing proposal by NHA” and subsequently  “other  groups  along  the  Pasig  River  and  in  other  areas  of  Metro  Manila”  

began  to  request  “assistance  from  TAO-Pilipinas”. (TAO-Pilipinas, 2013c)

In line with this experience, TAO-Pilipinas continues to prioritise in-situ development before looking at resettlement options. Similar to HPFPI yet dissimilar to GK, TAO-Pilipinas does not provide housing for free. More often than not they simply provide technical assistance on housing and site development issues within the framework of a funded government or NGO settlement or development programme. In the case where they are the main actor working with an urban poor community, such as with Masagana   (one   of   this   case   study’s   communities)   they   often   work   as   a   channel   through which funding for land, infrastructure or housing can be accessed and

provide training and assistance on paralegal land issues, land selection, savings, and housing and site design. Therefore, like HPFPI, settlement development that TAO-Pilipinas is involved in tends to be community-led and more incremental in implementation than what is experienced with GK.