Beyond the summit hall (Part 2)

In the first part of this piece, I shared the discussion from a panel I sat through on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) during last Friday’s ASEAN Community Town Hall, a civil society-organized forum held on the sidelines of the 48th ASEAN Summit in Cebu.

I wrote that civil society-organized town halls widen the conversation beyond state actors and official delegations, and serve as a counterbalance to the often carefully-curated messages of official summits. Allow me now to share the rest of the highlights from the town hall forum.

Ambassador Nelson Santos, senior adviser to the President of Timor-Leste on international relations, said one of the challenges for ASEAN governments is how to meaningfully involve people and other stakeholders in the development process. In Timor-Leste, he said, they try to go directly to the villages and consult the people.

Social support or subsidies, what we commonly refer to here as “ayuda”, are available, but Santos said these must be maximized, meaning they should be made more responsive to people’s actual needs and linked to broader development efforts rather than treated as mere short-term dole-outs.

Dr. Phyu Phyu Thin Zaw, an epidemiologist and lecturer at the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong, brought the discussion to the public health realities on the ground. She reminded the audience that the world is still lagging behind on SDG 3, which seeks to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.” Mothers are dying. Many children are still unable to go to school. Some realities, she said, happen in silence because they are not even discussed.

Dr. Zaw’s point on prevention struck me. She said politicians and policymakers often do not want to invest in disease and disaster prevention because prevention takes time, and its success is invisible. When disaster is prevented, there is no dramatic rescue, no politician personally handing out food packs, cash aid, or bottled water before the cameras. Yet the best public policy is one that prevents suffering before it becomes spectacular.

Dr. Jose Ma. Luis Montesclaros of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies discussed food security. He noted that a significant portion of ASEAN’s population continues to suffer from severe food insecurity, while many more remain unable to afford healthy diets. His suggestion was simple and practical. Farmers should be trained to speak the language of business, and businesspeople should be trained to understand the language and technicalities of farming.

These points about bridging communication divides and staying grounded in lived realities reminded me of another discussion I attended days earlier at the University of the Philippines Cebu. During the 6th Dukituki: UP Cebu Communication Program Research Forum 2026, San Francisco, Camotes, Cebu Mayor Alfredo “Al” Arquillano Jr. spoke about the Purok System as a tool for strengthening disaster communication, coordination, and community resilience.

I moderated the brief ‘Talk Back’ forum that followed Mayor Al’s presentation. What I found especially important was that the Purok System in Camotes treats communication not as something that happens only during emergencies, but as something built into everyday community life. When communities are organized in smaller, more personal units, communication becomes faster, trust becomes stronger, and collective action becomes more possible.

That local lesson also speaks to a larger regional challenge. Development cannot be communicated only from the top. It must also be built from the ground, through listening and building everyday channels of trust.

In the official halls last week, ASEAN spoke through declarations and ceremonies. In civil society spaces, ASEAN was asked to listen. That listening may be ASEAN’s most important unfinished work.