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The JJCICSI
Silver Anniversary |
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Sent to the Frontiers The JJCICSI Silver Anniversary Transcript
of Fr. Nebres’ response I wanted to say something about the past and something for the present and the future. First the past, I would like to thank Fr. Jack Carroll, Bishop Claver, Jing, those who really did a lot of the work but a very special thanks to Fr. Jack. The context of the establishment of ICSI, in 1984 as we know is the period of transition from Ninoy’s assassination and eventually EDSA. We were very deeply involved in those transitions and a lot of the challenge that face us at that time was how to have both a continuing reflection and writing that would guide us, as well as the challenge to actually do something as it says here, reflection and action. At that time Father Carroll was a part of the director of the IPC. I tried to talk to the IPC but they said they should stay with scholarship and not the action part, it’s not fair but basically it is the way it came to me. They don’t want to get engaged in the bloody efforts at that time but … and so eventually I talk to Fr. Carroll. Ok, if we can’t do it inside the Ateneo de Manila, we’ll do it in the Philippine province, I was Provincial… (laughs) and so established ICSI within the Philippine province and establish it in Loyola House and it played a very very important role. We do not underestimate each role. One, because we have very good people do the reflection and analysis lead by Father Jack, Bishop Claver and so on and two, because we have difficulty to translate it into action, Because its too complicated to tell you now that, but we did play the key role. So anything that we decided there could be translated by Bishop Claver, included in the CBCP meetings by myself because I basically chair the meetings for Cardinal Sin during that time as we are creating the response step by step. Basically working very closely with him and guiding him there and Father Bernas was very involved in political campaigns so we had vehicles to translate it there and if in that period we were able to at least shape a response that brought about that social reform but within the frameworks precisely of Catholic Social Teaching and within the framework of the faith in the gospels. We were doing the reflections; I think you could look back at the papers… so that’s the text of the past. Ah, let me say something on what happened after and the challenges now very very briefly. After 1986 we said that the time had come for the Society of Jesus and the Ateneo de Manila and the Social Apostolate to respond to poverty and social change within the new democratic space and this Complex that you’re in, the SDC, Social Development Complex was built with that in view, that is why ISO and ICSI came here, we set up CSP and CCS and IPC. Well, and the idea was precisely at that time to combine both reflection in ICSI and reflection in CSP with action CCS, we thought we could do that. Well as you know things have changed, CSP and CCS have now been absorbed into the School of Government. We have other centers here for education, the Ateneo Center for Integrative Development, we have the programs in Public health, the newest center that we will come up here in the Center for Social Entrepreneurship that is the consortium of the Graduate School of Business , the John Gokongwei School of Management, the Development Studies and there’s one more, the School of Government. Let me just say what the framework is and maybe invite ICSI to join. The framework we discussed that the framework of the 1970s which was to organize in the grassroots was not very viable we needed what we call mediating institutions. We needed institutions that will be more in the middle and so the School of Government we see as mediating institutions it is focused mainly in the local government, we see more and more of that before that in the Philippines that its not going to happen at the top nor at the bottom its going to happen somewhere in between and the School of Government is good in that. We agree with Amartya Sen that the key to get out with poverty is education and health and that’s why we focus on the public schools and we focused on public health and governance and that we have to do something more systematic about livelihood and that’s why we have this Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Let me just end with one story which tells you that it can work. I tell it to you because it was a surprise to me myself we’ve been running programs in education and health and social entrepreneurship as well as government in many places notably in Nueva Ecija. The most interesting example is San Isidro, Nueva Ecija with Mayor Sonia Lorenzo and see, this is something that surprised even us. She focused very much in her schools, improve her schools a lot as she was actually able to deliver Philhealth to everybody… and Gawad Kalinga Communities... very interesting, she said that when she was first the mayor, at 5 o clock in the am nakapila na ang mga tao because she put a system with Philhealth, DSWD and other things. They went for that system now. But the most interesting thing is that over three or four years, the income of the town went from 2 million to 16 million. They went from a fourth class to a second class municipality and her reflection is that, if you take care of the health of the people, and you take care of the education, makakaipon sila and they can actually take care of themselves. That’s something we never understood before. We always thought that if we create jobs first, and then later on they will have enough money to pay for health and education, I hope her experience is replicable, but when you reflect on it she says the problem kasi is that if you don’t take care of their health, their money is always lost to medicines, they get sick all the time so hindi sila nakakaipon. So I just want to tell you this, that why I tell you these stories because they are your neighbors now, they are all here and we invite ICSI to engage them. We‘re very much engage in the ground in education, in health, in social entrepreneurship, and it is an approach, it’s not actually a social science approach it’s more on business. In other words, we’re very focused on whatever works, we’ll analyze later. We first make sure it works and we’ll analyze later. We do analyze, I want to tell you (laughs) in fact what I have done now is persuaded a group with Bopeep Saloma to actually study these things. They have a team now from Sociology and Political Science to study what’s happening with Social Entrepreneurship, with Hapinoy, with Rags to Riches. They now have team that studies what’s happening with the schools, with governance and I think they are coming up with something quite interesting. But it’s a bit of a different approach it’s not doing analysis first and then deciding what to do later. It’s going in there and making things work and then we reflect on it on why did it work and we replicate and so on. So thank you very
much, I did want to tell you that they are new neighbors, in the SDC
and I do hope you might have a chance with them and to listen to where
they are and see how we can work together ultimately to come to terms
with the poverty challenges that Fr. Jack is talking about. So thank
you again Father Jack, thank you to Jing, I am sorry… Bishop
Claver was not here, to Gemma, thank you. |
Silver
Cafe Day 1 |
