P651M ODA-assisted projects for Quezon get underwa

Despite delays that pushed back the timetable of its full implementation, the P651 million (DM31 million) German government-assisted rural development project in Bondoc Peninsula, Quezon province is now being touted as a success story particularly in terms of its mobilization and beneficiaries in project planning and implementation.

And project funds unutilized on account of such delays are now being eyed as reserve financing for a two-year phase-out period aimed at consolidating mechanisms for sustaining the program beyond its official termination in 2003.

The Bondoc Development Program (BDP) is a rare example of an official development assistance (ODA) resource that recovered over problems relating to project design or poor project implementation.

The DBP is a bilateral agreement on technical cooperation between the German and Philippine governments aimed at improving socio-economic, political and environmental conditions in Bondoc Peninsula, an area plagued by poverty, insurgency and "landlordism."

The 15-year program, starting 1990 until 2003, is being implemented by a team of Filipinos advised by the GTZ, the German agency for technical cooperation.

It utilizes the strategy of "tripartism" in developing the self-help capacities of poor farmers and fisherfolk. Tripartism entails the cooperation and direct involvement of local government units (LGUs), non-government organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs).

The key result areas (KRAs) of the program are barangay development planning, agrarian reform, farming systems development, health and sanitation, coastal resource management, and enterprise development.

The program was delayed due to distrust from both the program recipients and the LGUs.

The Management and Organizational Development for Empowerment (MODE) Inc., a training, research and advocacy NGO, conducted a study of the BDP last year.

It found that the program was able to hurdle these problems by expanding the role of LGUs in policy-making, and by enlarging cooperation to include all self-help organizations, whether spontaneous or NGO-organized, at the barangay level.

The study, entitled "Broadening the Base of Participation: An Impact Study of Tripartite Cooperation in the Bondoc Development Program" and authored by Ed L. Santoalla, said that substantial program deliveries in the program’s KRAs became possible after such modification on the original tripartite prescription was made in 1996.

The study also found that tripartite cooperation in BDP is built into participatory rural appraisal (PRA), the participatory needs analysis, problem identification and solving tool introduced to the program’s beneficiaries.

There is the counter-parting scheme, which requires tripartite players including the beneficiaries themselves to contribute their share to the project thus establishing a sense of ownership.

The program, the study said, has provided the foundation for the economic and political empowerment of beneficiaries. But the program’s direct poverty alleviation efforts, e.g., enterprise development, are still hobbled by the absence of rural infrastructure and the continuing culture and apathy and feudal dependency.

The impact study on BDP is one of three studies commissioned by MODE, as part of its efforts to monitor and evaluate NGO participation in ODA-funded rural development programs.

The two other studies are "Integrated Area Development Theory and Practice: The Experience of the Western Samar Agricultural Resources Development Program" by Earl G. Parreno, and "Lessons in Constructive Engagement: The Case of the Belgian Direct Bilateral Aid for Agrarian Reform in the Philippines" by Eddie Ll. Quitoriano.

The three studies have been published under a book entitled "Lessons in ODA Theory and Practice."