English couple Lucy and Alex Mayers (pictured above) are two of the last VSO volunteers in the Philippines. Image, Keira Stephenson.

Pacific Scoop
By Keira Stephenson

Volunteer Service Abroad (VSO) has decided that the Philippines is all grown up now, and more than capable of sourcing volunteers from its own citizens rather than recruiting abroad.

“The Philippines has the talent-pool and skills to fulfill all the volunteer roles in our country”, says Mindanao VSO Peace-building  Programme manager Romulo de la Rosa (Billy).

“We are a middle income country with a lot of professionals. We just need to provide the organisational structures to get the people with the right skills to the right places and ensure their skills are made the most of ”, he says.

Having witnessed the success of VSO Bahaginan, a subsidiary of VSO which sends Filipino volunteers overseas, he wants to see volunteering become a more fulfilling and worthwhile experience for both local volunteers and the organisations they assist within the Philippines.

He also wants it to become easier for the returning Bahaginan volunteers to share their new skills learned abroad with their own country.

VSO is a 51-year-old international development charity which sends volunteers to developing nations to share their skills and has been working in the Philippines since 2001.

As someone who has been volunteering and working with Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) all his life, even spending more than seven months in prison during marshal law “as a result of my volunteer activities”, Billy is helping to smooth out VSO’s withdrawal from the country which will be complete in 2010.

Of his prison time, he says he was one of the fortunate ones, despite never receiving any of the  monetary compensation promised to those tortured and detained.

“You were very lucky to come back alive if you were arrested under Marcos”, he says.

He also lost friends in the infamous Agrarian Reform march during Cory Aquino’s presidency where “some of those we sent off to Manila came back, some got shot”.

However, the man who dropped out of university under the Marcos era but managed to complete a Masters degree in London on the effect of General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) negotiations and European Union policy on the Philippines coconut industry, is still dedicated to building peace in his country.

“I like to think of my peace advocacy as something based on justice. You recognize that past injustice needs to be redressed, but you want it redressed peacefully. The rebels have their story to tell too, it should be listened to rather than just shooting at them. That’s one of the reasons why I never emigrated – there is too much to fix here.”

He sees his work with Peace Mindanao, a seven-year-old grassroots peace building project for communities affected by conflict, as part of the solution.

In Lanao, where the organisation which has 14 partner NGOs plus two in Davao, developmental work is always linked with peace.

Whether an organisation is working on emotional recovery from war, coastal development, livelihood development, gender issues, water issues, or just studying English, conflict resolution plays a part.

As Billy says, the conflict in Mindanao, which arguably goes all the way back to Spanish then American colonisation, effects every facet of life here.

The Muslim volunteer programme helps to reduce prejudice against Muslims and promote peace, he says.

“If you are a Christian taking in a Muslim volunteer, then you will come face to face with their culture and find out they ‘re not that different from you and vice-versa. It promotes understanding between religions.”

The VSO is trying to popularise volunteering among Filipinos and publicise the the good work various groups have already been doing.

“We like to think of ourselves as a very religious people”, says Billy, “Catholicism and Islam are very influential, but volunteering doesn’t always figure. People go out of their way to do good deeds everyday, but volunteering is something else – you have very clear goals as a volunteer.”

Currently the VSO is working with NGOs in Lanao to provide technical support through its volunteers.

Volunteers can be involved with anything from helping to write grant applications, to working with the Muslim volunteer programme, but one of their major roles is to assist in formalising organisational structures and clarifying the goals of the NGOs.

Billy says that although the Philippines has a large NGO sector staffed largely by volunteers, it continues to be unsystematised.

The informality of  many peoples’ organisations means that clear expectations, government support and spending transparency are often lacking.

While volunteers are eager to help put management systems in place and also acquire new skills, different organisations have differing capacities to absorb the skills of their volunteers, says Billy.

Congress has recently brought in some volunteering laws to help systematise the process, but it is still treated very informally.

Volunteers usually don’t have regular hours and their work isn’t recognised on C.Vs.

Not having a job description or having to renegotiate it along the way as organisations and volunteers work out what they can expect of each other can also be frustrating, especially for foreigners used to a different way of working.

“The first six months of volunteering is always the most challenging”, says Billy.

Keira Stephenson is a post graduate communications student, majoring in journalist at AUT University. In 2009, Keira reported from the Philippines while on an intern scholarship.

Note from the author:

In August this year I was fortunate enough to travel to Iligan City in Mindanao, Philippines, with the help of a grant from the Asia New Zealand Foundation. An English couple Lucy and Alex Mayers, whom I met on the couchsurfing website invited me to stay in their house. They are two of the last VSO volunteers in the Philippines.

They shared with me the joys and frustrations of their life in Iligan and introduced me to some of the inspiring organisations and people they work with.

At a time when pre-election violence is gaining momentum in the Philippines and the recent massacre of 57 people including 30 journalists and media people in Maguindanao is receiving international attention, I wanted to focus on people dedicated to the slow, non-headline grabbing, unglamorous, work of building peace.

The following reports are based on interviews with some of the Peace Mindanao partners who were kind enough to take the time to explain their work to me. The group of Muslim English students, in particular were really excited at the thought of seeing a story in the media showing Muslims as peace builders rather than the terrorists they felt they were usually portrayed as.

To read more of my adventures in the Philippines go to my blog at Keirastephenson.livejournal.com

ENDS