Solutions ?!?

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People at home have been writing to ask me what they can do to help some of the people and situations I have been writing about. I have to admit that I don't really have much of an aswer. I don't know. the biggest thing that I have learned while in Manila is that I don't really know anything yet.

I am lucky to have come into this internship with an academic background in Human Rights. However, I have quickly learned that having academic knowledge in the face of real human rights abuses is like havig read the Canadian Driver's Test Booklet before getting behind the wheel of a car in Manila. I am lucky because I already have the right words to use to name the things that I am seeing. And my brain knows how to catalogue my experiences along with other similar stories I have heard and read. I am also able to quickly see connections between the things I am experiencing daily during my exposures and the wider reality of global human rights, politics and economics. But none of what I studied before prepared me to think up solutions to what seem at times to be insurrmountable mixtures of political, civil, economic, social and cultural human rights abuse.

Being here I can see clearly why the solutions to a country's problems need to come from that country's people. I have never lived in a house whose roof was made out of sheets of rusted tin held down by big rocks; or eaten mongo beans twice a day for weeks, because it was the only vegetable I could plant that didn't require a capital investment for irrigation; or purchased imported Thai rice, at a price I am struggling to pay, knowing that the rice fields in my own country are full of pinapple trees growing fruit for export. The people who experience these things daily have their own goals and are working towards their own self-empowerment. And it is necessary that the people from the Global North listen to them as the experts on these issues.

Here is what the people are telling me:

Most of the people I talk to during my experiences tell me that solving the daily human rights problems of Filipinas requires large scale changes to the country's political culture and economic policies. They tell me that the only way to eventually achieve this change is through the mass organization of the people. The groups who facilitate my exposures are made up of organizers and leaders who spend the bulk of their time doing consiousness raising activities within the communities. They talk to the people about politics and economics and social organization. They teach the people how to watch and read the news with a critical mind, and especially how to dissect government policies to see how they willl play out in their own daily lives. This work is almost always funded by individual and organization donations. I have been told many times here that the United Church of Canada is one of the biggest funders of progressive, pro-people organizations in the Philippines.

Many of the groups I have worked with recieve some funding from the UCC's Mission and Service Fund. If you are a member of the UCC, giving through the M&S Fund is a good way to assure that the money is going through an accountable system strait to people-centred work. Lookng through the M&S Fund website will allow you to see what countries have UCC partner organizations and to get a sense of what those partner organizations are doing to alleviate suffering from human rights abuse in their own country. (http://www.united-church.ca/funding/msfund) The M&S Fund also allows people to ear mark their donations for a specific country, and so would allow anyone inspired to donate after reading my blog to send their money to the Philippines.

The organizations I have encounter also spend a lot of their time trying to draw international attention to the situations on which they focus their work. Because so many of the problems in the Philippines steem from or are exacerbated by globalization many of the organizations I have met work as well to try to fight global trends like the war on terror and the free market trade system. They often have international solidarity campaigns and suggestions on how people in other countries can help the people in the Philippines in their struggle. The organization's official website is always the best place to find out this information. So I am including in this entry a list of the websites of the organizations I have been dealing with since arriving in Manila:

http://www.nccphilippines.org/
www.uccp.ph/
http://www.karapatan.org/
http://www.childrehabcenter.org/
http://www.peaceforlife.org/index.html
http://www.movement.org.uk/index.cfm?method=text.display&TextID=VisionStatement

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Comments

[AJ]

I had the pleasure of reading all your blogs, and honestly, I find them inspirational and an eye-opener for us all, especially for the Filipinos who live abroad. While we basked in the glory of living away from the poverty and injustice in the Philippines, I couldn't help but think of all those less priviledged Filipinos and their plight. The people had suffered injustice from no less than the government officials for a long time and they deserve better. Battling politicians is hard task indeed that even your life is at stake. If I were as rich as Warren Buffett, I could have donated my money to make their lives even better, but then again, the chances might be squandered by the officials which could find its way to their pockets. You see, corruption is THE main problem followed by uncontrolled population growth. To change society, we have to go back to the grassroots and train the younger generation, but as of now, that is just a wishful thinking.