By Boy Ancog
Community Organizer
I. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
This paper is an account of the writer in his one year assignment (January to December 2001) as Regional Coordinator of Project Seahorse-Haribon Foundation in the Danajon Bank region. The project has been in Jandayan Island particularly Barangay Handumon for more than six (6) years, first as a seahorse research initiative and later on as a CBCRM strategy in partnership with Haribon Foundation.
Prior to his assignment, the writer was involved for three years as the community organizer in a CBCRM project in Batasan Island, Tubigon, Bohol, which was a component of the Coastal Resource Management Project (CRMP) funded by USAID, which Project Seahorse and Haribon Foundation are closely linked as partner implementers.
In an attempt to contribute to the growth and development of the project, this writer tries to give a community organizing perspective with which hopefully lead to some responsible decision as to where the project should be heading to as far as community development is concern. Or yet, to answer the question; Is the project really for community development or for research? In fact, this is the main essence of this article.
The writer tried not to mention names of people but cannot avoid to site events, actions, or situations that may lead to imply certain personalities, directly or indirectly involved with the project. To these people, please accept the writer’s apology for this act of personal intrusion. This report is not meant to harm or discredit certain individuals or institutions, but rather tries to ignite a driving force to motivate for a deep and serious assessment and evaluation of the whole Project Seahorse-Haribon initiative in Bohol.
More than six years have passed since Project Seahorse – Haribon started an intervention in Handumon, yet the community in Handumon have not gone far enough in addressing community empowerment for conservation. Research initiative expanded in other parts of the Danajon bank. An excellent social and biological intervention that may help in providing inputs to some legislation, local and national, protecting the resources of the region. Now the unresolved question of who really owns the data still remains an issue. Is it the community?; Project Seahorse?; Haribon Foundation?; or somebody else?
Adding to that, the project is pursuing and rushing to go into alliance building within the region hoping to improve seahorse management in particular and coastal resources in general. Another excellent initiative that also pushes hard enough PS-Haribon advocacy agenda to higher level. Yet still, a major question is that; “Where will (or did) this alliance get its organizational mandate?” Is it a project mandate or a mandate emanated from the fishers themselves? This question is very important if only to think of sustainability of the alliance. Normally, organizational mandate emanates from the very reason of its existence. It is very easy to tell the seahorse fishers of their problems and issues and therefore create an artificial process in order for them to organize to address such. But it is totally a different story if the people themselves realize these issues and problems themselves and drive them crazy to organize to resolve their situation. The former is a super imposed strategy from an outsiders’ point of view, while the later is a revolutionary process which takes much longer but intrinsically built based on the dreams and aspiration of the people.
This paper may not answer all those questions (and rather not intended to complicate the situation), but is hopeful that along the way, Project Seahorse-Haribon Team will consider contemplating specially from top management.
Furthermore, this report does not assert authority over what has been said, but rather, it is a pure an honest insights and observation that may not be true from a different point of view specially when supported by scientific explanations from a well documented research undertakings in the future.
II. THE COMMUNITY ORGANIZING (Insights and Learnings)
In 1999, there was an attempt to set the direction of community organizing both in the CRMP sites and the Project Seahorse sites. In July 15-16 of that year, a workshop was conducted at Mercedarian Retreat House, Dauis, Bohol. It was attended by the Project Seahorse-Haribon-CRMP Team.
The activity was divided into two major parts: the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, and; the directioning part which was based primarily on the observations and recommendations of the SWOT analysis. The first part was an opportunity for the staff to look at the general pattern of the ongoing community organizing process in the project sites. It was also the venue where problems and constraints in the CO initiatives were openly discussed by the team, thereby identifying areas for improvements.
The second part was the designing of the CO direction based on the observations and recommendations of the SWOT analysis. The CO direction was simplified in three major phases: the entry phase; the community organizing (CO) proper; and the phasing-out.
Stages of entry phase were as follows: pre-entry (site selection, contact building, community consultations); social investigation; integration, and; initial immersion. The CO proper was defined as: in-depth immersion; core group building; action-reflection-action process; PO launching, and; mobilizations. Lastly, the phasing out was defined as: alliance formation; network building; fund sourcing for sustainability, and; project turn over to the community.
After the workshop, a general concept of CO direction was defined and became the basis for developing a dynamics of a CBCRM framework. But, as to how it was actualized in the field is still a big question until at present.
1. HANDUMON – The Core Site
Barangay Handumon, in Jandayan Island, Getafe, Bohol became popular in community-based seahorse conservation. Its popularity extends not only in the Philippines but also in some corners of the globe. Not only thousands but millions of pesos have been invested in the community for the last six or more years. It is a huge amount of money that seems everyone must be concerned about for its effective utilization.
Barangay Handumon is expected to lead in the seahorse conservation effort among all the satellite sites if not the whole Danajon region. Its management experience is supposed to manifest ripple effects to the neighboring communities. However, it showed very little sign of positive influence as to the way it is perceived by the surrounding villages or barangays even the two other barangays within Jandayan Island.
Why is this so? What is the reason for this phenomenon? Reviewing the concept of the project, it seems no problem at all. In fact the intention is genuine. The vision is clear. The thrusts and goals are enormously excellent and implementable at all angles. But then the reality is also clear. Until now, Handumon community is so dependent, powerless, disunited and leader-centered. Illegal fishing (especially blast fishing) is still rampant and some of the violators are residents of barangay Handumon, immediately right in front of the nose of the project.
As a community organizer, the writer would pin point directly some lapses in the approach and inconsistencies of community organizing right from the very beginning. This contention is not only singling out community organizers, but the whole team of staff involved since the beginning until at present. The following are some major lapses of community organizing work in Handumon:
a. No Entry Plan
The two most difficult parts in community organizing work are Entry Phase and Phasing-out. These two phases must be directed solely by the community organizer, otherwise, every wrong movement it will create during these phases is very difficult to erase from the minds of the community people. Firstly, an entry plan must be ready, solid and concrete. The entry plan reflects: the objective(s) of the project; an implementable project framework; a defined community organizing approach; the duration of the project in the community; and a very brief overview of the phasing out mechanism. Absence of an entry plan may pose problems along the way.
Secondly, the entry plan must be presented and understood by the community. This will be included during the project presentation and consultation. Some approaches even let the community agree on some areas of the entry plan. This will also prevent distortions of CO approaches once a community organizer is replaced by a new one in the process.
In Handumon, a clear example resulted from the lack of entry plan is KANAGMALUHAN. If we look at its membership, almost all are women and just a handful of them are coming directly from seahorse fishing families. Any logic would tell that the primary targets of the project then are the seahorse fishers, without seeing an entry plan.
There are more to the entry plan than the example cited above. The point is that, entry plan is a jumping board to every step the community organizer do in the community especially during the early period of the project. Every member of the team specially technical people must adhere to the plan once inside the community and will take directions from the community organizer in whatever they do including the non-project related and personal ones.
b. Misguided Integration
Good integration is always misconstrued as the good relationship developed between project implementors and the community people. In a sense yes, but in a strictest sense not always especially if this relationship is associated with a meshianic complex tendencies. Giving favors (especially related to money) to the community people because they are poor and helpless is good but oftentimes do harm than good to the organizing process. Most likely, this action will affect the peoples’ participation. At times, people will participate in project activities not because they are convinced, but because they are indebted to someone, or worst, they expect more favors in the future.
Providing them with provisions in times that they will be sent to trainings and exposure trips outside the community is most likely worst. At one point, one community organizer spent a kilo of rice each individual for every meeting conducted within the community to improve meeting attendance. At another instances, a project staff when drunk was seen by the villagers (not only once) burning hundred peso bill to light a cigarette.
These actions are absolutely unacceptable. Pure and simple arrogance, these are hard facts that build boulders of barriers blocking between the (always) suspicious community people in Handumon and the genuine project framework.
In effect, the villagers looked at the project as a milking cow because it created an impression that it has a lot of money and asking for favor is just okey because they are good people. Why not? The staff are provided. They have a house to live, a helper to cook their food, and enough food to eat. It seems that CO’s of the project forgot one of the basic CO principles which says: “live with the people, eat with the people and work with the people”.
The impact of this kind of integration is felt worst at this point in time of the project. Every time there is a project activity, people always look for a material exchange of the time spent away from their livelihood. They see the project as direct provider of food to their tables, but they have not reached the point to trust the project as an avenue to facilitate their collective struggle for survival. They see the project as the venue to air out their grievances resulting from the abusive fishing practices, but they do not see the project as the venue for planning the right action to respond to their situation. They see the project as the medium to channel their problems to the authorities, but they do not see it as the right vehicle to ride so that they do it themselves as an empowered people. They see the project as their individual saviour, protector and defender in times of aggression, but the project failed to provide them with instruments and skills so that as an organization, they can fight aggressors face to face.
c. Vague Organizing Approach
It was not clear what type of community organizing approach used and adapted by the first assigned community organizers. It was not also clear whether what was adapted in the beginning (if there was any), was passed on to the succeeding CO’s. What appeared to be is that the community experienced a very chaotic organizing process and later settled down nearest to a project-based organizing, but not exactly. The difference is that, in project -based organizing, the community is often times aware of the specific terms of the project; such as timeframe, target beneficiaries, amount of money involved, community counterpart support, etc. In Handumon, it is not very clear to the community what is the project all about in terms of specific terms and conditions.
Project-based organizing is very common in government initiated projects. It is an approach whereby all community activities is determined by the mandate of the project, therefore time-bounded. Any activity that is unplanned or not reflected in the project plan is very seldom tolerated. This type of organizing is very good if the project is only after of a concrete quantitative output in paper.
Some CO’s call this approach “dead” organizing. Dead because often times than not, a year or two from the projects eventual withdrawal from the community, PO’s disintegrate and die a natural death. Community participation gradually disappears and in most cases, all that is left are long list of unpaid loans and unattended infrastructures.
The problem in Handumon is that in an average of less than a year there is a new CO (seven CO’s since 1996). Sometimes three months, sometimes six months, it depends. This posed very serious problems. Consistency in approaches varies every time there is new CO. Community organizers have their own political biases different from each other, sometimes very extremely. Consequently, the people will be forced to adjust very frequently that in some cases result to irritation and tension. Every time a new CO comes, what the predecessor accomplished is dragged down, sometimes to an uncompromising level.
The partnership between Project Seahorse and Haribon Foundation was not very clear from the point of view of the community organizers. All PS staff take directions from Project Seahorse leadership including the CO’s. This situation refrained the CO’s from adapting Haribon’s CBCRM framework, which defines clearly a standardized CO approach, which is solid organizing.
d. Lack of Immersion Strategy
The most fluid part of community organizing is immersion. This is where the community organizer must try to understand the peoples’ lives, culture and aspirations. This is where the community must understand the people’s problems and interests. In solid organizing, this is where the community organizer literally becomes one with the people. Some organizers say; “immersion is the romance of organizing work”. The basic CO principle that says; “live with the people, eat with the people, work with the people” applies literally during immersion. It will take a minimum of three months before an organizer can fully immersed in a community. The problem is that, some of the organizers assigned in Handumon (under Project Seahorse) only lasted for less than six months. What can the project expect from them in terms of immersion?
Most project CO’s in Handumon were handicapped in this part of CO work. Immersion is not only staying or living physically with the community. It is also living and staying emotionally in the people’s hearts. It is also living and staying within their minds. It was not known if there was a CO in the project who, at a certain period of their life in Handumon became a fisher themselves. The probability is that some of them went only with a fisher just for curiosity or worst gimmickry.
But immersion does not only rest at the romantic arena of CO work. It must be coupled with a well-planned strategy. During immersion, a core group must be developed. Leaders are hatched not just discovered. Situational analyses are dynamically facilitated along with action-reflection-action activities. This core group defines the vision, mission and goals and eventually grows into dynamic peoples’ organization determined for a cause.
e. Poor Groundworking
It always follows that if there is inadequacy in immersion strategy, naturally, groundworking is also compromised. Groundworking is not just as simple as legworking. Legworking is merely an act of informing or providing an individual the information of a certain event, an activity to be undertaken, a project to be launched, or a meeting to be conducted. Groundworking is an act of laying down an analytical framework in every individual in order for them to decide in favor of a certain event, an activity to be undertaken, a project to be launched, or a very important decision in a meeting to be conducted. This process is called conscientization, a CO jargon attributed to the word conscience.
In CO parlance, groundworking is like preparing for good materials in order to make a beautiful trouser or dress. The project is the sewing machine. The organizer is the sewer/tailor. S/he gathers and put together in detail elements that would make into a beautiful trouser or dress and sew them together.
Meetings, assemblies, mobilizations or any community activity must be grounded or at least undergo certain process of groundworking. Any community activity is like a trouser or a dress. Its beauty and durability depends on how good a tailor/sewer is, re-enforced by the efficiency of the sewing machine. The community provides the cloth, the thread, and all elements that would make a beautiful trouser or a dress. After all, it is the community who will “wear” it when it is finished. Elements of a successful meeting (or any related community activity) are usually knowledge, skills, courage and determination. These are laid down and prepared along with specific thrust, goals and objectives of the particular activity far ahead of time in order to have good materials. The preparation is called groundworking.
An example of the inadequacy of groundworking is the poor management of the marine sanctuary in Handumon. The sanctuary was established way ahead from the dynamics of CO work. Eventually, because the community did very little participation during the planning and decision making process, they can’t feel it as their own. Therefore, they find it difficult to maintain and sustain enforcement, much more plan for long term direction. Another one is the QED boat that for all we know, it is as good as garbage now.
Good groundworking in every community activity allows meaningful action-reflection-action processes individually or in group. In effect, the community feels that collectively they gradually grow into a dynamic micro-social structure politically and eventually economically.
f. Unplanned Phase-out Mechanisms
At the early stage of community entry, at least a general concept of Phase-out Mechanisms should have been designed. The phase-out mechanisms help guide everyone in the project where we want the community go in terms of goals and direction. This is also the basis for the CO to design in detail an Exit Plan. Presently, everyone in the project is placed in a blank wall as to where concretely the community in Handumon is heading. Of course, individually, everyone has an excellent idea, but putting all these ideas concretely is another thing. For how long the project stays in Handumon? Are we ready to design an exit plan? What are our bases of designing an exit plan?
2. THE SATELLITE SITES
There are about five (5) communities considered to be “satellite sites” of Project Seahorse-Haribon. This is to exclude the two other barangays within Jandayan Island, the research sites of the Rolex community fund and Cataban Island. The project is somehow expanding, at least the biological research for marine protected areas. On the other hand, community development efforts in these sites are taken for granted. Although in some ways, community organizer intervention is evident in Batasan and Bilangbilangan, it appears that its purpose is only to serve the convenience of the ongoing research initiative.
Research is an excellent avenue for community entry but it needs an organizer to facilitate the process. Researches play very vital role in community building. But when the community does not understand researches, this will only alienate the people further and eventually treat research as an academic tyranny that they may ignore or fight against.
The satellite sites need CO’s to advance environmental conservation. If we look at the long term sustainability of the marine protected areas, community organizing cannot be compromised. The community must have stake in every research undertakings to serve their own interest. In a way, the community people must participate in any research undertaking from the very start of its conceptualization.
If the data is partly owned by the community, then they (the community) have to be part in the process since the beginning and must understand that the result of the research will be used as an instrument for organizing. It is only then that the community is not treated as mere laboratory. The role of the catalyst (Project Seahorse-Haribon for instance) is to facilitate that data will become a valuable input for the people’s adherence to self determination.
3. PAMANA KA SA PILIPINAS: The Project Seahorse-Haribon Initiative
PAMANA KA SA PILIPINAS, an alliance of community-based marine sanctuaries in the Philippines was conceptualized and hatched by the Project Seahorse-Haribon-CRMP Team. In fact its first consultation workshop in September 1998 happened in Jandayan Island with funds coming from Project Seahorse itself. Since then, activities related to the alliance are discussed and sometimes decided within the team until after the Bangka’t Buhay mobilization on October 2000.
Alliance building is an inherent part of the CO process. It is seen as an eventual leap of organizing dynamics from the mass-base peoples’ organization to a higher form of peoples’ movement for a proactive advocacy. This contention was affirmed during the CO direction setting at the Mercedarian workshop. Two options were seen then: first, to link all peoples’ organizations in the project sites to an existing alliance; second, to initiate a formation of an alliance as a secondary organization of the existing peoples’ organizations in the project sites.
Consequently, Pamana Ka Sa Pilipinas was the realization of the two options. Firstly, Pamana Ka Sa Pilipinas was already an existing alliance, and two of the community project sites (Handumon for Project Seahorse and Batasan Island for CRMP) were already recognized members of the alliance during its first national assembly in March 1999. All that was needed was to strengthen the rest of the sites and apply for membership. Secondly, the formation of an existing alliance was already undertaken ahead which the team was the primary led. All that was needed then was to integrate PS agenda into its over-all framework and direction and to put the alliance as the legitimate advocacy arm. Bangka’t Buhay 2000 was an actualization to this contention that PS leadership has to learn.
Unfortunately, in 2001 strategic workplan, Pamana Ka Sa Pilipinas was no longer a primary factor of Project Seahorse-Haribon Team. Its national program did not anymore recognize the alliance as one of the tools to advance PS’s strategic direction in the Philippines. Seemingly, PS-Haribon after the Bangka’t Buhay 2000, distanced itself from being an active catalyst during the alliance’s formative stage to just merely outsider observer, and treated the alliance as an ordinary network apart from the PS-Haribon direction. As evidently manifested, any staff had to explain her/his involvement in the alliance’s activities because Project Seahorse, especially the international team did not recognize that building this alliance (PAMANA KA SA PILIPINAS) was an intrinsic CO work, set within the dynamics of Philippine PS initiatives.
Instead, in the beginning of 2001, PS-Haribon pushed for the formation of Seahorse Fishers Alliance within the Danajon region. A duplication at work.
4. SEAHORSE FISHERS ALLIANCE
A few years back, the concept of creating an alliance of seahorse fishers within Danajon Bank had been a subject of discussion and even struck heated arguments within the PS-Haribon staff. Even the CO’s were divided in this issue.
It is a given and accepted fact that Project Seahorse-Haribon has been in Handumon for quite enough time and there has to be impact of its intervention that can be translated into management options. Handumon experience will be one of the bases in framing this management options by broadening its constituency at the Danajon region through an alliance. Primarily, this alliance should respond to the issues and concerns directly affecting seahorses and its relatives thereby promoting management and conservation without or with only minimal adverse effect to the seahorse fishers.
But then, there were difficulties in conceptualizing the type of alliance that will be established considering the geographic scope of the target sites and the diversity of the fishing communities. This is not to mention the limitations of available financial and human resources of the project.
In forming the alliance, the bases of unity must be defined and agreed upon by the concern fishers. There were two options then: whether to form a loose alliance or a solid alliance.
Some of the team members (including this writer) were not keen on forming a loose alliance because it has a loose binding. It is only good for advocacy purposes and that was not what it intended to be. The project wanted an alliance that can initiate resource management aside from advocacy. Forming loose alliance will not address a long term perspective of seahorse management.
On the other hand, some of the team members were not also keen on forming a solid alliance since it needed to have mass-based organizations in the communities before it can be done. This entails massive community organizing, and the project had no intention to do massive organizing work at the community level. Tapping existing peoples’ organizations in some communities to start the alliance also needs ground-base organizing work. Besides, it can not assure that the PO’s that will join are really seahorse fishers (manugaay), because they were not organize by the project in the first place. In this case, a basis of unity can not be assured that it is for Seahorse management.
In the process of long debate, the concept of an organic alliance was developed. The idea was presented to the whole Philippine team for comments during one of its meeting. In this team meeting, the concept was collectively agreed.
Organic alliance may not be the best form that would respond to the seahorse management issues in the Danajon bank. The risk is high considering that the concept is very new and therefore experimental. However, the concept has an intrinsic self-organizing dynamics that answers the problem of lack of ground-base community organizers. The fishers who attended during the assembly on November 19-20, 2001, may not be all seahorse fishers. But, most of them came from organizations of fishers who were obviously a little advance from the rest. They were potential organizers in their own right had they been given the chance to define themselves during that assembly. But two days was not enough for the purpose. Eventually, it died before it was born.
5. JANDAYAN CRM PLANNING (The PCRA)
Formulation of a Jandayan-wide Coastal Resource Management Plan is an eventual leap from the Handumon experience. This was an assumption that was clearly identified in the CO direction defined during the Mercedarian workshop. Instead of going municipal level CRM, Jandayan CRM is best opted because of its contiguity and applicability in terms of ecosystem, biodiversity, cultural homogeneity and geographic considerations.
It started rightly with a PCRA approach, hopefully, it will also be finished with it. It started with a tandem of a community organizer, a technical person and the community. Although the technical person facilitated most of its activities, it is very interesting to note that it really underwent an ideal CO process. The technical person’s comprehension of CO work (even without enough CO background) is exemplary to deserve commendation from the project team. This is an example of a technical person in harmony with community organizing. Harmonizing technical work with CO work must not only be at the level of rethorics. It must be put into concrete actions and learn by its experience. One must not be superior with the other, neither, one must not leave the other alone in the process.
III. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Differences between biologist and CO’s always exist. It is self-explanatory. However, let this not blind us to the reality that we don’t own the community that we are working with, therefore, we can not impose our biases on them. In the first place, they did not (or do not) want us. It is our biases that dictate us, and kept telling us that the community needs us. The people in the community want only simple lives, simple dreams, simple aspirations, and maybe simple happiness. It is us who made their lives complicated.
It will take time for the community people to discover that there are non-simple issues and concerns that binds between them and the environment where they get a living. We are not in the community to teach them something (skills, education, etc.), or give them material things (money, buildings, boats, etc.) in order to compel them to discover these things by reason of indebtedness. We are not there in the community to bring them our expertise in order for them to see and understand what we see and understand. They might have seen and understood it already, though differently from our point of view. We are in the community to lay down the venue for their realization that what they see and understand can be brought into a forum where they can discover justice. Justice for their plight as one people wanting to be free from unequal exploitation of the resources where they get their livelihood. And because we made their lives complicated, we are bound to follow a certain process of self-discovery not only by the community but also by and within ourselves. This is a moral issue that we must understand as development workers.
Most of the time we think that we have nothing to do with their plight. We often heard a statement that says; “We are a research institution and therefore our concern is a good scientific research to provide support for sensible legislation for management, and that development is not our concern and therefore leave it to the development institutions”. This assertion reduces the community from being an active development participant into just merely research laboratory and the people as specimens. In development work, the writer considers this statement not only anti-developmental but also a social crime against the community people.
Precisely, it is presumed that the reason why a tandem of biologist and CO is encouraged from the very start of the project because PS-Haribon intervention is a development initiative. We still want to see the marriage between these two institutions at work. Project Seahorse’s research expertise and Haribon Foundation’s CBRM framework.
We must learn to accept by conviction that community organizing is a process. It is not in the realm of science and therefore its result can not be measured quantitatively. For example, how can conscientization be measured? The concept alone is associated with multiple indicators which are relatively connected or absolutely independent with each other. The possible action to guide in determining quality conscientization is the intensity of groundworking activity. Even then, groundworking is so fluid that it is always affected by multiple factors such as cultural differences, political beliefs, clan/family feuds, etc. History is the only way CO work can be rightly judged.
Hence, a CO must not be bounded by time and its activities cannot be chained in a detailed workplan. Workplan is necessary only as a guide for a possible pattern of events, but, using it as a tool to measure accomplishments will only limit the CO in a specific purpose and not entirely the whole process. Consequently, because the CO is confined to accomplish his/her workplan, s/he may accomplish all of it without necessarily having the people conscienticized. Or, s/he may not accomplish what is in the workplan but enable the people to be conscienticized. In this regard, s/he undermines her/his credibility to her/his supervisor, especially when the latter has no understanding at all what is CO work.
Henceforth, any action, intervention or initiative done in the community must pass on the judgement of the CO. Presumably because the CO is suppose to be the one who is following the pattern of community behaviour in relation to the progress of the project. Therefore, the CO must be the last one to decide whether an activity (planned or unplanned; official or personal) will be pushed-through or not. Otherwise, he will be cleaning the mess afterwards and delay the organizing process even more.
Despite the odds of community organizing work experience by Project Seahorse-Haribon team in Bohol, the project still enjoys relative momentum in terms of specific community works and people’s initiatives. What it achieved is a product of unquestionable sincerity and dedication by most of the project staff, biologist and CO’s alike.
Unquestionably, PS researches are gaining ground both locally and internationally. But how these researches can be used at the community’s advantage still remains to be seen. The primary concern is that most if not all of these researches are highly academic and are beyond the comprehension of the community people. No amount of effort exerted to make the people understand and participate in the formulation of these researches. Allowing paid fishers to help in some aspect of the research (ex. Data gathering) without them knowing and understanding its purpose is not in anyway community participation. Therefore, the questions still remain: “To whom these researches for?”; “Who owns and benefits the data?”
As an honest intention the writer suggests the following recommendations to help guide Project Seahorse-Haribon’s initiative in Bohol and the fate of its intervention in Handumon:
Design and implement a comprehensive assessment of the research and CBRM initiative in Handumon in order to determine whether or not to continue its presence in the community.
1. Consider incorporating Haribon’s CBRM framework in all PS-Haribon sites allowing the Marine Ecosystem Program (Haribon-MEP) to have full control and supervision over all CO initiatives and direction.
2. Reconsider Pamana Ka Sa Pilipinas as a venue for broader advocacy network of Project Seahorse in the Philippines by re-opening an arena of continuing dialogue and planning.
3. Pursue seahorse alliance in the Danajon region but consider looking for additional source of funding so it can fully operate and evolve as a dynamic organization of small fishers.
4. Reconsider a program for Local CO’s and Local RA’s with full supervision by the Haribon’s MEP using the Bolinao, Pangasinan model.
5. Consider registering Project Seahorse as an independent legal entity under Philippine government and start operating as independent Philippine NGO.
