A Discussion with the Candahug Council

Revising Ideas for a Meeting in Candahug
After a long slumber Friday night, we awoke on Saturday to prepare for another meeting in Candahug, with the Barangay Council members. Sitting on the front steps of the Delgado residence, sipping our coffee and munching on mango slices, we set out to review the past several days' meetings and mull over our questions. We needed to translate our questions and thoughts into some action, laying out a plan for today's opportunity to review the concept for the guide with Candahug.

First off, we discussed the audience of this product. There are multiple audiences potentially, including the client (Kusog Tacloban), the communities they will serve, and all stakeholders involved in planning processes. The target level of governance for the project is to be the barangays, and the guide is to be formatted so that it is accessible to, if not used by, residents. Where, in the midst of all of these entities and needs, is the best entry point for a guide? The barangay residents, the Barangay Development Council (planning committee appointed by the barangay chairman), the Sangguniang barangay (Council), others? If it (or parts of it) are for residents to use, then the guide needs to be relevant to the concerns of residents, the concerns of their daily lives. If the guide is more tailored to the Council or different barangay committees, in its applicability, then residents stand to be excluded. It is becoming apparent to us that while the project may be about capacity-building and self-reliance and resiliency born of the community members, integration of community-level planning into a municipal planning process is crucial, so also at the front of our thoughts is how the planning processes and tools in a guide are relevant to existing governmental frameworks.

A page of Trevor's scrawling notes laying
out a plan for an exercise with the
Candahug Council. There are always a lot
of arrows, flowcharts, bullet points. We felt
so energized that morning!

Second, we discussed how to more methodically work with Candahug this weekend on participatory mapping. Knowing our week was flying by and not sure of how much we would be able to "test and revise" ideas (as is the process underlying the concept of this project--part of its goals), we wanted to keep it short and simple, and interactive. We wanted to explain the link of the exercises to the legally mandated Barangay Development Plan (BDP) and explain the significance of the BDP in representing the barangay in / contributing to municipal-level planning. Equally important, we wanted to find out more about how the activities could be used within the community (independent of formal planning processes) to tackle projects, so wanted to know more about the community's existing mechanisms of self-organization and mobilization, used to address needs/priorities.     

A Thematic Mapping Exercise

We had originally planned on Tuesday to ask Candahug residents to map hazards (flooding, liquefaction, etc.) in the community, to help them to gather and map information and demonstrate how their observations would contrast with and prove to be more accurate than the current regional hazard maps (which paint the entire neighborhood as being susceptible to floods and liquefaction). As Marie explained in her post on that day, we misplaced the base maps we had printed, so the activity shifted to creating a map of the neighborhood, combining streets, land use, and hazards.

A poster detailing GIZ's SIMPLE process (picture taken
in Barugo's municipal planning office--see future post).
It will be important to demonstrate links between any
strategies and tools that we devise for community-scale
planning for barangays and the existing governmental
processes, such as GIZ has accomplished with its
SIMPLE project. (SIMPLE stands for Sustainable
Integrated Management for Local Government
Ecosystems.)

What we decided to introduce today was a scheme for participatory planning among residents centered on mapping, that could be used to produce the Barangay Development Plan (BDP) for submission to the municipality, as well as guide of intracommunity planning. We've discussed the work of GIZ here on the blog, and its SIMPLE plan and community-capacity-building using thematic mapping to develop the BDP. GIZ has worked in Palo municipality, but current barangay officials in Candahug (a barangay of Palo) seemed unaware or unfamiliar with SIMPLE. It may have been brought to the community before the current officials' tenure, or perhaps not at all--we are not sure which. 

For those familiar with the Conway approach, we basically introduced thematic mapping of analyses on top of a base map, in order to produce overlays of different analyses and a composite/summary analysis map. These overlays and the summary analysis, we wanted to explain to Council, could be used to 1) identify where to develop and where to place projects that had been identified through the needs assessment that Kusog Tacloban had helped to facilitate (and other priorities that the community might identify), and 2) identify new priorities or needs stemming from observations made from the analyses. Concrete examples as relevant to Candahug include where to build or relocate homes, where the safest place for a resilient shelter might be (that is still within the neighborhood, though there might not be a suitable location), new trees (given the losses in Yolanda), and a community garden or other communal space. We would then explain how new maps could be created.

GIZ and the municipalities who we had spoken with who have worked with SIMPLE had driven home the point of thematic mapping in the community. And this whole process mirrors much of the Conway design program, so we did not feel as if we were generating anything ultra-original. Still, we felt a moment of breakthrough, a moment of genius! This was so simple! And we would not leave it simply at analysis and mapping of community envisioning. We brainstormed how to help link these exercises to potential resources for seeing through projects, and asking the community by what means they might use the mapping (and other planning exercises) to develop solutions that address their needs. We had read some information about community cooperatives in the Philippines as an important source of micro-lending for small enterprises and land purchases, including as a means to secure land for informal settlers and those forced to relocate after disaster. We were curious about Candahug's experiences and thoughts. 

The Meeting
Four council members waited for us in the peach colored barangay hall. Kapitana was no where to be found, so we began without her. I felt a bit nervous as the councilors were so quiet and and we were without Dennis to interpret (he showed up later in the meeting). So, it was up to us to get our message across in English and with the drawings we had sketched out. We had decided to sketch out a flowchart to explain the process while we were actually explaining it. Fortunately, this seemed to work, and it turned out that we were pretty well understood by everyone--and two of the councilors spoke English. Dennis, when he arrived, was able to help us ask more targeted questions in Waray.

The creamy yellow building in the background is the
Candahug Barangay Hall, which has also served as the
community's daycare (a municipally funded service),
health clinic, and general purpose community space.
All of our meetings with residents took place there.
During Yolanda, the storm surge reached the second
story of the building; residents say that the surge was
at least eight meters high in their neighborhood.
Recently constructed homes can be seen surrounding
the hall. During the storm, these surge would have
completely covered these structures. Over 140 residents
died during Yolanda, mostly men and most due to the
storm surge. 

The feedback was that the mapping "would be very helpful" to the community, as it was something that they had never embarked on in a participatory manner. An engineer had produced the spot map that hung in the barangay hall prior to Yolanda. The Council said that they would probably ask Don Bosco, a technical school in Cebu that is in Candahug building permanent shelter, to assist with a creating a new map. One councilor mused that the original copy of the neighborhood's street map had probably been lost during the Yolanda, as the engineer's office in Barangay Pawing had also been flooded.

We discussed how the mapping, as well as questionnaires, could be used to map out locations for community projects. "What projects are on the mind of Candahug residents?" we asked. One was the infrastructural problem of culverts located above the channel in some of the small streams in the areas, which, combined with trash thrown into and accumulated into ditches, was causing stagnant water collection. We mentioned the potential for community gardens (given the enthusiasm for them in Javier); while there is interest, the toxifying of the soil from Yolanda's storm surge and the low economic potential of a garden had dampened any excitement about that project. More popular was the idea for a community fish pond.

As for the mechanism for implementing such projects, Candahug, we learned, has had a cooperative since 1970. The Candahug Free Farmers Multipurpose Cooperative is the entity that pools resources to tackle agricultural, consumer, and settlement needs. The cooperative does not collect regular fees, but it seems that it springs into actions once a project is decided upon. The barangay also teams up with others for pentakasi, the Waray word for community projects, where residents volunteer to clean-up public areas together. Candahug has worked with its seaside neighbors Baras and San Fernando to such clean-ups each year. Maybe there is potential for barangays to conduct mapping for larger scale/scope pentakasi projects, I wondered. These communities, like many in Leyte, will have to contend with an encroaching sea in the years to come.

The coastline in Candahug is lined with a seawall,
an attempt to stave off the sea as it eats away at
the coast. Kapitana Pulga of Candahug reports
that the beach once stretched a kilometer or more
out from the palms. In Yolanda, the waves and
storm surge tore huge chunks out of the wall, and
took down most of the vegetation along the shore.
Candahug residents are well aware of sea level
rise and stronger storm seasons, expected from
climate change. 

I asked about the state of the Barangay Development Council (BDC); it is non-functioning at the present time, since several members died during Yolanda. That moment was a stinging reminder that, in getting wrapped up in all the discussion of planning processes and how Candahug compares to other communities and measures up to the legal structure for planning and development, that the community is quite literally trying to regroup and that the scope of planning that we are discussing them may very well fall out the short-term view, as they are quickly trying to repair the school, homes, and so on. 

Before Yolanda though, this committee, appointed by the Kapitana, was active, and worked to enforce ordinances restricting development in riparian and coastal areas. Local residents would also band together to catch poachers in the mangroves cutting down trees for charcoal, and committing other illegal activity. Cutting of mangroves and other destructive activity may take place though when "there are no others options" for residents--for economic activity, for basic needs--as Dennis interpreted for a councilman, and in such situations "the environment may take a back seat." 

Though the project we are working on intends to get the ball rolling on implementing environmental site assessment into redevelopment now and not later, this comment has cropped up so much in our time here that I wonder how to make inroads into communities' perceptions of when environment should take the front seat, of when the right time will appear. In our minds, the Post-Yolanda landscape is ripe with such opportunity; will the moment be seized? 

Trevor