CIFAL Philippines Promotes Grassroots Change through Partnerships
28 September 2018, Quezon City, Philippines – In pursuit of sustainable social and economic change, the International Training Centre for Authorities and Leaders in Philippines (CIFAL Philippines) jointly with the University of Philippines have implemented the Grassroots Change through Partnerships (GCP) project to promote best practices of sustainable development in seven communities in Philippines.
Sustainable development driven by the appreciation of the people’s needs at the grassroots level is a trend within development studies that has been increasingly accepted by some academics. Finding solutions to the most critical problems through the lens of the ones who suffer them has been accepted to be not only efficient but also accurate.
The GCP project is under the Inclusive Business program of CIFAL Philippines and it is targeted to seven communities across the country distributed in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao cities. GCP involves a series of livelihood development activities through a “Skills Camp” with the goal of sharping and improving the skills of project beneficiaries in their chosen field.
The project is comprised of three phases, namely: preparation, participatory planning and implementation. The preparation phase involves communicating with the different local government units and various government agencies that might be able to partner with the project in assisting the communities. Data scoping and Community Needs Assessments (CNA) served as tools to determine the type of programs and skills needed in the communities.
The participatory planning phase helps to integrate community members in the decision-making process as subjects of their own development. For this phase, some workshops are held to: 1) validate the CNA results, 2) identify the resources of the community, and 3) determine skills training and schedule chosen by the members of the community.
Finally, in the implementation phase the “Skills Camp” project is released based on the results of the previous phase. It is divided into two training phases: integrative and technical skills training. The integrative phase complements the technical skills training and both serve to boost entrepreneurship skills of community members.
GCP is envisioned to deliver community change through strong partnerships among multi-stakeholders in the society.
Photo: community members during GCP workshops