International Day for the Eradication of Poverty In The Philippines
By Gilbert P. Hoggang

Here in the Philippines, poverty eradication was a mouth word of the government since 1997. On the same year the Social Reform Act was enacted as another strategy to combat poverty, creating the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) under the office of the president to coordinate all the government line agencies and Civil Society Organizations to converge together in the implementation of anti-poverty programs and activities. It also gather together 14 marginalized and impoverished sectors of society to be represented in the council to sit down with government and discuss and plan Anti-poverty programs for the poor. I sit at the council for the Indigenous Peoples sector. The convergence program is not working well. It may work at the national level discussion but it does not work at the regional and local level since local government units does not understand the mechanism or, mechanisms for implementation is not enough. The ever changing of secretaries and undersecretaries of the commission also does not jump start the program. The poor sector of society does not feel that there was an anti-poverty program going on.

Yes, we might have a day for eradicating poverty, we might celebrate it every year, but still, poverty is there.

In the Philippines, I noticed that we, the poor people depend much on products that are produced by Multi-national companies, most of it, imported from developed countries. Yes, it is quite cheap, so the government agree to it. This is Globalisation maybe, open market trade. It changed the culture of the people. Instead of working hard to produce their needs, people are now going on the cheap, instant, and very fast to use products-from food to everything. We are now dependent on the cheap products that it seems, right now, poor people can still afford. They are everyday and every minutes being flashed on TV, and being repeatedly announced on radio with prominent people and personalities promoting it. In my small poor village, I observed that the former upland farmers who's forefathers have built hundreds of years the Banaue Rice Terraces, have lost their identity as proud farmers, because it seems they do not know how to work in the farm without the imported fertilizers and dangerous pesticides as well as the capital (credit) to start their farm work. These have buried them to poverty. All their harvest are use to pay all the inputs.

What am I doing? Am trying to go back to the old ways, of doing agriculture with my own pace, reduced or cut spending on expensive inputs by using locally available materials, diversify and integrate production against mono-culture being promoted by companies, and am sharing this to some farmers in my community and to other communities in the region who request my help. I work with some Civil Society Organization friends in the region (Indigenous Peoples Support Group -R02), and with my small knowledge, we conduct trainings to poor indigenous peoples communities on sustainable agriculture and forestry. We are collecting indigenous materials from seeds to seedlings; let the communities propagate, plant and multiply it, pointing out the importance of producing our own needs rather than being dependent on the products of others.

We are now on training poor communities to be organized and be dependent by themselves- just provide the necessary opportunities for them to learn. If given the opportunity, the poor community can decide by themselves, what they want to be, and what development path they want to go.