Insurgency once blocked progress in Sitio Lantad, Misamis Oriental.
But now development is in full swing, with new roads promoting not only trade but also community understanding.
In a sixth class Leyte town, a local government nutrition plan assures poor children they no longer have to go to school hungry.
These and other initiatives by 10 local government units (LGUs) from across the country, which prove the power of effective local governance, will receive on Monday in Malacañang the Galing Pook Awards. The annual awards have recognized outstanding local leadership for 18 years now.
This year’s winners include four LGUs each from Visayas and Mindanao and two from Luzon.
Awardees from Luzon are the province of Albay and an inter-local health zone in Quezon, composed of the towns of Real, Gen. Nakar, Infanta and Panukulan.
Visayas winners are Limasawa, Southern Leyte; Alimodian, Iloilo; Bohol and one of its towns, Maribojoc, which was separately recognized.
Mindanao
In Mindanao, awardees are Sarangani province, Misamis Oriental, Upi in Maguindanao, and Zamboanga del Norte.
Seven winners—Sarangani, Misamis Oriental, Upi in Maguindanao, Zamboanga del Norte, Infanta in Quezon, Bohol and Albay—would be honored for the second time, Galing Pook Foundation said in a statement.
The winners were chosen from 137 nominees from across the country. They were chosen based on the following criteria: innovation, positive results, transferability and sustainability, people’s participation, and efficiency in program service delivery.
This year’s winners showed effective implementation of projects on rural health, indigenous peoples’ empowerment and speedy delivery of justice.
Growth for all
Ma. Nieves Confesor, Galing Pook Foundation chair, said, after 18 years and more than 250 awardees later, the search for innovative sustainable arrangements by local governments and communities, even in the most challenging conditions, ensured that growth was for all, and not just for the elite.
In winning the Galing Pook award, Misamis Oriental demonstrated that arms were not always the solution to insurgency.
The local government struggled to build roads to facilitate access to the indigenous Higaonon community, promoting trade and commerce. Before the new roads opened the village to the rest of the province, insurgents used the area as base, taking advantage of its remoteness and inaccessibility in their fight against government forces.
As development gradually spread to the community, peace also returned.
Nutrition plan
The local government of Limasawa, a poor Southern Leyte municipality but enshrined in Philippine history books as the site of the first Catholic Mass, implemented an “innovative nutrition plan” to reduce malnutrition, which often kept children away from school.
Between 2004 and 2009, malnutrition rates dropped from 8.8 to 2.61 percent among preschoolers and from 6 to 2.17 percent among grade schoolers.
In Mindanao, Sarangani province launched the Justice Enhancement and Empowered Program (JEEP), deploying a mobile court to its municipalities to speed up the resolution of cases involving poor litigants.
Since its launch six years ago, the program has trimmed the number of detainees at the local jail from 600 to 286.
The town of Upi in Maguindanao started an information technology (IT) project that has been a model for neighboring municipalities. Established in 2004, the Community e-Center (CeC) project “remains the only fully operational center” in Maguindanao providing IT and even broadcast capability to locals, Galing Pook said.
Empowering Subanen
Zamboanga del Norte was recognized for inclusive governance, bringing the indigenous Subanen community “into the mainstream” through the Provincial Indigenous People Coordinating Unit. The office encourages the Subanen to participate in local development.
Visayas winners pursued health and local management programs that improved the lot of their constituencies.
The town of Alimodian built four new high schools to decongest the two schools that were serving students from 51 barangays. Bringing the new schools closer to the communities they served “allowed the families to reduce their school expenses and has improved the academic performance of the students,” Galing Pook said.
No rabies-related death has been recorded in Bohol since October 2008 when the province started an information drive as part of prevention and elimination program to combat the deadly disease usually transmitted by infected dogs. The province also integrated lessons on responsible pet ownership and rabies prevention in elementary school classes.
The Bohol town of Maribojoc is the first local government to lead a land administration project with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The project has raised the town’s collection of real property tax and settled land and boundary disputes among neighboring property owners.
Luzon winners
The Luzon winners were recognized for initiatives that promoted the health of their constituents.
The Albay provincial government has been pursuing a holistic health program in pursuit of the global Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
Galing Pook said the province was close to achieving MDG indicators in child mortality reduction, maternal health improvement, protection from HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases, poverty and hunger eradication and environmental sustainability.
The towns of Real, Gen. Nakar, Infanta and Panukulan in Quezon collaborated on a community-based mental health management program to provide counseling to residents traumatized by death and destruction caused by typhoons in 2004.
The program has been assisting people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological problems. It has helped reduce new cases from 110 in 2006 to 28 in 2010.