Yunus: ‘Poor women are good credit risk’

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) is on Cloud 9 because 1984 Awardee for Community Leadership, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. The RMAF was 22 years ahead of the Nobel in recognizing Yunus’ work among the poor.

The Dalai Lama received his RM Award (Asia’s Nobel, so-called) in 1959, 30 years before his Nobel in 1989. Mother Teresa got her RM Award in 1962, 17 years earlier than her Nobel.

This means that Asia, the RMAF of the Philippines in particular, is not behind, it is in fact way ahead, in recognizing its own home-grown heroes and, yes, long before these persons have become familiar names in the world.

Yunus was only 44 when he received the RM Award in 1984, one of the youngest in RMAF’s roster of laureates. Now there is an RM award for Emergent Leadership for those below or on the threshold of 40. Yunus was quite surprised that he was chosen at that time because Grameen banking (microfinance) for the poor was not yet a byword. This is what Yunus said in 1984:

“I still cannot make out how the trustees of this prestigious foundation could notice a small effort such as ours, which has reached only some 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million. (As of July 2006, the population is 147.3 million - Inquirer Research Dept.) I can only admire the foundation for taking a big risk in choosing me…”



Because of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus will surely be quoted very often these days, listened to, queried. His words and work will be dissected.

Let’s listen some more to what this economist, said in 1984. Do we recognize a glimmer of the grand possibilities?

“As a student of social science, I could not feel comfortable with what I learned. When it came to applying this knowledge in solving real problems, it appeared toothless. I continued to get a feeling that the knowledge that we present in the discipline of social science is replete with pretensions and make-believe stories…

“Social scientists enjoy being up above in the sky and having a panoramic bird’s-eye view over a wide horizon…The view from the sky without the supportive close-up view from the ground merely encourages you to take recourse to daydreaming.

“Not all people have access to a bird’s-eye view. Poor people don’t. They are too busy eking out a survival for themselves with their worm’s-eye view…Poverty can be better understood if we look at it from the ground level at a very close range. Then, instead of generating billions of words about it, we can find ways to cope with it.

“Poverty is not caused by a person’s unwillingness to work hard or lack of skill. As a matter of fact, a poor person may work very hard—even harder than others—and he has more skill and time than he can use. He languishes in poverty because he does not receive the full worth of his work. Under the existing social and economic institutional arrangements, someone else always comes in between and skims off the income that was due to him. The existing economic machinery is designed in such a way that it allows this process of grabbing to continue and gather strength every day, so that the earnings of others can make a handful of people richer and turn a large number of people into paupers.

“A poor person cannot arrange a larger share or return for his work because his economic base is paper-thin. If he can gradually build up an asset-base, he can command a better share. Land to the landless will help build up this base. There are other forms of assets that will improve his economic situation. Credit, for example; it is a liquid asset. The recipient of credit can decide which particular tangible form he will convert this asset into…With financial resources at his disposal, an individual is free to build his own fate with his own labor. Nothing can match the spirit of a free human being…

“Removal of poverty must be a continuing process of creation of assets by the poor at a steady rate. Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut. But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith in their ability…”

For more on Asia’s greats like Yunus, read RMAF’s series of books on the RM awardees, “Great Men and Women of Asia”. I found writing some of the stories in the books very inspiring because many of these great men and women were just like you and me when they set off.

I had the chance of listening to Yunus when he was here in 2001 to address “Grameen replicators”. He mentioned then that the RMAF award helped boost the microfinance movement that he started in the 1970s in a small village in Bangladesh through small loans to the poor, especially women. The Grameen way has since taken root in many parts of the world.

When asked why Grameen has a bias for women, Yunus replied: “Because women are good people. Poor women are a good credit risk, even in the most difficult economic times. They are the best judge of their own situation and they know best how to use credit when it is available, especially when supervised and encouraged by their peers. Small business loans pave the way to breaking their poverty cycle. In just one program operating in Southern Luzon, over 1,000 women and their families crossed the poverty line between 1997 and 2000.”

The Grameen-style microfinance movement is growing in the Philippines. In 2001 repayment rate was at 93 percent. Interested in mocrofinancing? Contact Philnet at philnet@mozcom.com.

Microfinance is not in the curriculum of business schools. Maybe it is learned first and best in the school of the heart. And on the ground, like Yunus did.

Sikat

The Catholic Church in the Philippines sets aside the second Sunday of October as Indigenous People’s Sunday and October might as well IP month.

An NGO that has been working for almost 10 years for the education of IPs is Sikat or Schools of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition or Silungan ng Katututbong Kaalaman at Tradisyon. The Filipino word sikat means shine and when the accent is placed on the second syllable, it means celebrity, a person of note and achievement. Sikat is a non-church, non-profit, non-stock movement that aims to make the IPs find their rightful place, their place of pride, under the sun through education. Not just any education but an education that is attuned to the IP’s way of life—their culture, language, livelihood, habitat, and everything that defines them. This means developing a “culturally responsive education for indigenous peoples”.

Behind Sikat and supporting it every step of the way is the Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC).

In December 1997, a group of people from various regions and faiths gathered for the first National Trainers’ Training in order to share and build visions for a national network of cultural workers and community educators. That meeting gave birth to Sikat and the network of schools.

Al Santos, Sikat executive director and founding member says: “In establishing community-owned culturally responsive schools, we create linking pathways for the promotion of indigenous education among various tribes across the country.”



Community-owned means the people build the schools with their hands, run them, staff them and, most of all, help in making a curriculum that is suited for the IP children. This does not mean isolating themselves or setting themselves apart, this means strengthening their children’s rootedness so that they do not become alienated from their origins. Then they could face the rest of the world with pride—pride in their ancestry and everything that nurtured them—even sharing indigenous knowledge and wisdom that many of them had been ashamed of or wished to forget.

There are now dozens of Sikat schools all over the country. These are mostly in the primary level. While there are now schools in the tertiary level (not Sikat’s) that offer specialized curricula for IPs and those planning to work among IPs, there is no way for an interested IP to get to this level without going through the primary level.

But how could IP communities have primary schools in the highlands if there are no trained teachers? Who is the teacher who will walk through forests primeval and across mountains to get to a remote place on earth? Is it worth it? You bet it is, or must be, for I have met teachers who’ve done this. But they are few. And how long could they last?

One of the solutions to the dearth of teachers is to get trainable ones from the communities themselves. They need not be college degree holders or board passers. Training such teachers is what Sikat has done successfully. Why wait forever for someone with a teacher’s diploma to fall from the sky? The children are growing up fast and can’t remain ignorant and illiterate forever.

In Sikat schools the children learn not only the three Rs but also about themselves. The Sikat school is a strong pillar for empowerment. It transmits knowledge crucial to the survival of the tribes. It encourages students to learn their own languages and protects their identity and rights as IPs. It sustains community cycles and events. In others words, the Sikat school is woven into the cultural fabric of the IP community.

Making this work is not an easy task. It involves tri-partite efforts and involvement of the IP community, the NGO and the local government. Local government units (LGUs) have been responsive, Santos says, and why not, it is their constituencies that would benefit from this type of innovative education. Needless to say, they also need to put in local funds to make Sikat happen.

Now the problematic part. While Sikat education could well serve the learning needs of the IPs up to a certain point, how do they move on from there if their teachers have not gone through the regular qualifying exams and their schools aren’t accredited? Although teachers have gone through Sikat training modules and are definitely well equipped to teach, many have not gone beyond elementary or high school. How will their students go to the next level, high school or college, if the Department of Education has not accredited these schools?

This is what is being worked out, Santos points out. The DepEd really needs to address this concern.

There are IP communities that are not so remote, whose children have access to regular schools. Despite their poor and special background, these children have adjusted and made it to the mainstream. But by going mainstream so early, how much of their sense of roots have they lost and exchanged for what is alien?

Sikat does not merely address the problem of education, it is blazing a trail for the IPs to be educated through a rich and meaningful way. I couldn’t help thinking, well, the farther the purer, but then one can’t remain isolated in this day and age. Education and integration is the key, but integration with pride and dignity. But preservation, too, of timeless wisdom and knowledge that are as old as the hills.

Donate old phone books to the women of the Alay Kapwa Christian Community that makes beautiful bags and baskets out of them as a means of livelihood. Pls. drop them at the home of Maring Feria on 3 Taurus Bel-Air 3, Makati. Tel. 8956234.

Billboards from hell(2)

There’s a (2) up there because I used the same title last year when the Anti-Billboard Coalition (ABC) whipped up a storm. Many storms have come and gone since that time and billboards have continued to collapse on highways, vehicles, transport systems, structures and human beings except on those who put them up.

Someone suggested I use the title “Death by billboard”.

The man who instantly died after he was hit by a falling billboard was probably still being embalmed when this outdoor advertising executive said on national TV something like this: Milenyo was a strong typhoon and things standing were expected to fall, among them trees, electric posts and billboards. If we ban billboards, he said, we might as well ban trees and electric posts.

Ano raw? Trees aren’t marijuana. You don’t have to be a true-blue greenie to know the basics about trees. And electric posts? Many have contributed to the ugliness of the metropolis because of the entangled wires they weave around them but they stand there for a purpose. And we expect our power providers to someday do away with unsightly wiring.


But the billboards? The mushrooming thousands of billboards on top of buildings, along roads and superhighways? And throw in the smaller ones that hang on lamposts, columns and street railings. What purpose do they serve?

I do believe in advertising but not in the use of billboards and hangings that litter the landscape. Sure, advertising adds to the vibrancy of the economy, and if well done, informs and educates consumers about product choices, it increases sales volume and helps lower prices, etc. As an industry it also gives jobs to a lot of people. But it could go overboard in content and method and become exploitative, offensive, destructive and dangerous.

The billboard overkill is an example. Now every outdoor ad agency and its clients want a piece of that wall, that roadside, that skyline, even the blue above.

I suspect that if billboards were banned altogether, manufacturers would be happy, equally happy. This would level the playing field, so to speak. Manufacturers, all of them, no longer need to spend for that kind of advertising. Hey, there’s still print, TV, radio, word of mouth, events sponsorship, even charity and social advocacy.

We’d just have a handful of losers—those who invested their money in the uglification of the environment and those who work for them. But there is life down the road when it is all cleaned up just as there should be life after jueteng.

EDSA is not my regular route but when I drove through there a few days ago, I was aghast at how cluttered it has become. No more piece of blue sky in one’s peripheral vision, just the darkening horizon. The whole beyond has been obstructed by rows upon rows of screaming ads that are not just there to be seen but to be read as well. Oh yes, I’ve caught myself reading some of those ads while driving. Careful, those billboards may not flip over but your vehicle might.

This brazen assault on your senses just blows your mind to billboard hell. How have we come to this?

Last year I received a letter from a reader who complained that the letter M (which stands for Mary) on the Antipolo Marian shrine has been obstructed by the giant M or twin arches of McDonald’s. Well now, what do you say to the church officials who run the San Carlos and Guadalupe Seminaries along EDSA who have allowed their haven of green (for the motorists’ eyes) to be taken over by the advertisers? How many pieces of silver did they earn?

Billboards were once made of hand-painted metal sheets. Now they are made of plastic sheets that come out of giant printing machines. I once saw a team preparing to hoist up a billboard. The sheets flowed like a river and covered the whole sidewalk.

This reminded me of the European artist Kristo who covered entire structures with canvas and then had them photographed. He mummified entire landscapes for the duration of his outdoor exhibition. He was making a statement while the population watched in awe and puzzlement. Our advertising and billboard industries leave nothing for the imagination.

Someone should do a Kristo and use discarded tarpaulin from billboards and wrap an entire landscape. That would be a statement.

The issue now against billboards is not just their content. It is their proliferation. It is the inconsiderate, wanton, crude, rude desire to call attention and to sell. Manufacturers plaster giant pictures of their products everywhere. Cell phones, garments and accessories, food, health and beauty products, real estate, accessories, hardware. Just as guilty are the self-styled evangelists, politicians, movie promoters and TV stations.

The bucolic and beautiful landscape in the provinces that beckon people home—it too is now groaning under the weight of billboards. We have become a billboard wasteland.

Once upon a time billboards stood parallel to the highway. Now they are placed on a diagonal position or on a right angle to the road so that they can face, overwhelm and distract motorists.

The billboard disease has spread to the rest of society. Now, everybody just hangs or nails anything on an empty space. ``Tubero’’, ``room 4 rent’’, ``lady bedspacer’’ and ``manghihilot’’ announcements have been around for a long time but now you have ``Happy Fiesta’’ and ``Congratulations graduates’’ from councilor so-and-so.

As of last year, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago already had two bills pending. Senate Bill 1714, the ``Anti-Billboard Act’’ seeks to regulate the placement of billboard signs. SB 1668 is ``an act prohibiting officers from claiming credit through signage announcing a public works project.’’

Billboard advertising—big or small—should be banned altogether.

Where to take your electronic junk

The good news is that we (from Metro Manila and other major cities) no longer have to search far for an “electronic junkyard” where our unwanted stuff could be consigned to, sorted properly for reuse or recycled. There is a way to prevent the rise of Payatas-like wastelands made up of toxic and harmful non-biodegradables such as computers, cellphones, microwaves ovens, electronic toys and gadgets, batteries and the like. Wall-size TVs, and tiny MP3 players and digital cameras will soon join the march to these junkyards.

Walk through the Jurassic Park that is your house or office and identify the electronic dinosaurs that have been sitting in dusty corners for years. At some point they reached obsolescence or were beyond repair. Where do you take them if there are no takers? They shouldn’t be consigned to the garbage dumps or coral reefs. They could be toxic and hazardous to living things. So where do these hardware go and wait to be reincarnated or recycled?

Some years ago I brought a car trunk-ful of these stuff to a vocational school of electronics that had use for them. I was so thankful they took them all—from cordless phone to dot matrix printer to radio/tape recorder that’s been silent for 20 years plus so many more. But I forgot to bring the 1993 laptop whose manufacturer is now extinct. It’s still waiting to be properly laid to rest.



The greenies have answers to questions pertaining to wet garbage and other biodegradable matter. But when it comes to the electronic gadgets, few could come up with concrete solutions as simple as where, what, how, when. Like, where should deadly dead batteries go besides the garbage dump?

This column piece is a recycled one, by the way, a chip off a long one, happily rewritten to announce a piece of good news: the Waste Trading Market or Recyclables Collection Event (RCE).

For several years now the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE) has been running a yearly RCE that encourages groups, communities, institutions and individuals to bring their recyclables to buying stations (usually big open spaces). Junk (bottles, cans, ink cartridges, paper, etc.) could be exchanged for cash or new ones. This activity helps divert still useful materials from the landfills to the recycling industry. Donate your old, broken down computers, TV, aircon, cell phones, fax machines, laptop, adaptors, batteries, etc. but if there are buyers, that would be great. The goal is to not let these things end up in the dumpsites.

Starting Oct. 6 and every first Friday of the month thereafter, the “Waste Market” will be at Goldcrest parking lot, Arnaiz Ave., Makati. Starting Oct. 20 and every third Friday of the month thereafter, it will be at the Ayala Alabang Town Center (in front of St. Jerome Parish, parking lot 4), Muntinlupa. This is a pilot project that will run till December.

And where do all the electronic junk (or so-called non-traditional waste) go? PBE has a tie-up with HMR Enviro-cycle Philippines that has a plant in Sta. Rosa. Participating recyclers have complied with Department of Environment and Natural Resources requirements. They are not supposed to recycle, not discard stuff in the landfill.

Over the past years, RCEs have collected some 91 10-ton dump trucks of waste and diverted these from landfills. The estimated economic value of the waste may not be huge but the good done for the environment cannot be quantified.

The PBE office is on the 2nd floor of DAP Building, San Miguel Ave., Pasig City. Tel 6353670, 6352650 to 51. The RCE coordinator is Nancy Pilien. The executive director is Lisa Antonio. The chair is Edgar Chua, CEO of Shell.

Computer recycling is not new. One US group that I discovered on the Internet some years ago has this come-on: ``We recycle surplus micro computer equipment to maximize its economic value and minimize its environmental impact.’’ Back Thru the Future Micro Computers, Inc. had some terrifying data at that time.

``Did you know? Of 350 million desktop computers sold since 1982, 50 % (175,000) of these machines are in storage today. According to the National Safety Council only 6% of all PCs manufactured are recycled, while 70% of all major appliances are.’’

The company has several strategically located warehouses in the US. Proximity to sources of discarded equipment helps reduce freight costs. ``The simple fact’’ Back Thru said, ``is that as new technology becomes less expensive the cost of removing the old technology becomes a major cost factor in an upgrade budget. The value of the old equipment may no longer cover the cost of removal...

``The cost of recycling has increased dramatically…with the huge quantities of older equipment displaced in large corporations…There is not a single biodegradable item in a computer and they don’t belong in a landfill. Monitors are actually considered hazardous waste, and in many communities are banned from curbside pickup.’’

If you want to know more about computer recycling, go to an old link, www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/COMPUTER.HTM. The paper on this topic starts off by saying, ``When a big electronics company announces a big investment plan, interest usually centers on what products the company would be manufacturing. No one would ask the company what would happen to these products--personal computers, fax machines, microwave ovens, televisions--when they reach the end of their useful lives...’’

Not too long ago I watched a TV report about computer waste from a western country being shipped to a remote place China where people dismantle the machines to get at precious pieces of metal. The result: a horrible wasteland littered with computer debris.

The Pope’s language

A marine scientist, upon seeing the damage of the recent oil spill on Guimaras, is likely to say to his fellow scientists, “The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.”

We journalists would write, “All the fish died.” It thunders in its simplicity and you couldn’t get more dramatic than that.

Author Kurt Vonnegut says that his favorite line among James Joyce’s stories is from the short story “Eveline”. The sentence: “She was tired.” At that point, Vonnegut says, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

“Simplicity of language,” he says, “is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively 14-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”

The subject of simplicity in language—and its sacredness—was going through my mind while I was going over the lecture that Pope Benedict XVI delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany last week. It was not a papal “to the city and to the world” (Urbi et Orbi) speech, by the way, only a lecture for a select group of intellectuals in an academic compound.



A sentence in that lecture has so infuriated Muslims who felt that Islam was demeaned. That sentence was not the Pope’s own words. The Pope was merely quoting a Byzantine emperor who bashed the Prophet Mohammed’s way of spreading the faith. (I do not wish to repeat that sentence here.) The Pope thought the emperor said it “with a startling brusqueness” but he went on to quote it anyway in his lecture. By quoting that statement, the Pope wanted to merely illustrate a point. He did not say he agreed or disagreed with it.

Well, the Pope should have made himself clear in the next breath, because how were the Muslims to know that the offending sentence’s intent was not something also his?

The Pope’s lecture that I read—four times the length of this column—was not easy. It was an English translation from German and the subject was philosophy and more.

The Pope has said he was sorry his words (the quote he used) caused offense, something he did not mean. He did not say he was sorry that he used the quote. If the Pope was deliberately testing the waters or proving something by using that offending quote, then he certainly got some answers from the way Muslims reacted.

Many documents and encyclicals of global significance have come from the popes of recent years and one could easily say that these were not crafted by the individual popes alone but were the handiwork of theologians and experts from various fields. Same with the brief speeches and homilies they deliver during their papal visits.

But the Pope’s lecture in Regensburg (much like his controversial 2004 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World” while still the Josef Cardinal Ratzinger) seemed like he crafted it by his lonesome. A lecture is the lecturer’s own, something straight out of the lecturer’s mind.

The Vatican website calls this piece “Lecture of the Holy Father” and has the title “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.”

The Pope began and reminisced as only he could: “It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors…There was lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making a genuine experience of universitas…

“The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties…(I)t was once reported that a colleague had said that there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.”

Well, after those sweet reminiscences the Pope dived briefly, but intensely, into the subject of Islam and Christianity, the Koran and the Bible, and the face-off between Byzantine II Paleologus and his educated Persian interlocutor. It was here that that offending statement by the Byzantine emperor was quoted.

One more paragraph on God’s nature according to Islam and Greek philosophy and then the Pope segued into God’s transcendence and otherness, the “de-hellenization of Christianity”, dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.

Taste the flavor of Pope Benedict XVI’s language.

“A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures…

“For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.”

That offending quote in the early part did not stray there accidentally. It was put there for a reason. For at the end of his long lecture about a subject that was above ordinary mortals (Jesus spoke more simply), the Pope again took up the debate between the Byzantine emperor and his Persian interlocutor. Once more, he stressed reason as the basis for a great dialogue, not debate, of cultures.

Great. But by then, one would have become bewildered, befuddled and lost in that arcane language that you either knew or didn’t know what offended you.

Surging like ‘The Oceanides’

Helsinki--After days of Nordic food, bottomless coffee, workshops, talk shops, civil society networking and so-called “open space” discussions (throw in a few films), the 450 participants of Asia-Europe People’s Forum 6 (AEPF 6) held in Helsinki called it a day.

There was no evidence of rice and spice deprivation withdrawal among the Asians as they were very vocal, as victims and potential victims of neo-liberalism should be. Asians and Europeans of the G&D (grim and determined) grassroots variety have, once again, found their collective voice. On the fourth day, they let it all hang out at a city square through songs, dance, mime and a “people’s soup kitchen” courtesy of the Finns.

Here in the land of a thousand lakes, the land of the revered composer Sibelius, (for cellphonephiles, the land of Nokia), Asian and European voices swirled and rose, like the ocean’s roiling surge in Sibelius’ symphonic poem “The Oceanides”. (Finland is just a wee bit larger in area than the Philippines but has a population of only five million. Compare that to our 80 million plus, or just Metro Manila’s 10 million.)

As AEPF ended, the object of its trajectory, the Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) was about to begin, with government leaders in attendance, GMA among them. These Asian and European leaders forge political and economic links that could spell the race to the top for some or the race to the bottom of the ocean (the Pacific, particularly) for many. Together, the Asem member states have influence over half the world’s GDP.



AEPF, the vibrant people’s forum that it was, ended on a high note, clamoring to push the people’s alternative agenda to the attention of Asian and European heads at Asem.

AEPF 6 holds its big assembly parallel to Asem that meets every two years alternately in Asia and Europe. Asem 2008 will be held in China and already, AEPF is wondering whether it could also hold its own there. At the plenary, the distinguished Susan George, fellow of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute, described China with foreboding as the worst example of communism and capitalism.

Well, Chinese "NGOs" (read: government-supported) at AEPF were getting it on the chin. And why not, they came with propaganda installations that showed Tibet as a happy place, (no)thanks to China. But that is another story.

George warned that unbridled competition between Asia and Europe is destroying the European social model. “European leaders who tell us that the European Union needs to accept open markets, labor flexibility and deregulation are pretending we can do the impossible—compete with China and other low-wage but high-skill, high-tech countries.”

Asia-Europe relations, she stressed, must be based on cooperation rather than competition if a race to the bottom on wages and social welfare standards is to be avoided. George was also concerned that the European Commission is using trade negotiations to undermine the development of public services and greater equality within Asia.

Charles Santiago, director of Malaysia-based Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization and member of the AEPF organizing committee agreed. “With the WTO discussions stuck somewhere between the intensive care unit and the crematorium, there is fear and concern from the Asian side that the EU will aggressively pursue its trade and investment objectives through bilateral agreements,” he said.

AEPF 6 hoped to provide ways for Europeans and Asians to cooperate rather than accept competition as a way of life.

Neo-liberalism, the evil that AEPF has bashed to a pulp, remains a global threat. I asked delegate Dr. Alfredo Robles of De la Salle University for a layman’s definition and he called it “a night watchman’s concept of the state, it means privatization, deregulation, liberalization, with minimal state intervention in the economy.”

But AEPF, he said, could provide strategies for exchange and an articulation of alternative views. It can also influence official processes, say, in Asem. Well, Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) has a voice within Asem while AEPF, the people’s voice, has to cry out loud in order to be heard up there. AEPF seeks to be recognized as an independent forum and as having a legitimate role in the Asem process.

“Asem has a continuing democratic deficit,” AEPF’s closing statement said. “Asem has concentrated on promoting cooperation between governments and representatives of business interests, and its agenda has been geared towards trade, investment and political issues. The economic pillar has promoted pro-market policies as opposed to alternative people-centered policies.”

In other words, AEPF said, there has been no attention to learning from those who have felt the effects of the imposed development patterns—the farmers and workers in both continents, for example.

The groups within AEPF must go beyond constantly talking to one another and project the AEPF’s socially-oriented agenda more forcefully through concrete moves. They should make use of the different forms of media. But first, they must speak simply and carry a big picture, give their concerns a human face. What does it look like down there?

For example, Finland’s reindeer herders are a threatened lot because of too much logging in prime forests—an issue brought up at AEPF through film. Tapio, the God of the forest in Finnish mythology must be angry. Also, the issue of Asian labor and migration in Europe was among the hotly discussed topics at AEPF. And so, before flying home I made sure I picked up some related stories—the Filipino au pair problem in Europe, for example—for a special feature.

I also picked up some smoked reindeer cold cuts from the Finnish deli.

Asian-European sounds in Helsinki

HELSINKI—Here in the land of revered Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Asian and European peoples’ voices are being aired loudly. Here is a symphony of sounds, so to speak, rising, blowing with the cold Baltic wind that is getting colder by the day.

The event is the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 6 (AEPF 6) for NGOs and civil society organizations (CVO) that are non-state and non-corporate. The theme is “People’s Vision: Building Solidarity Across Asia and Europe”.

What better way to start than with a short ferry boat ride and an informal dinner-gathering of kindred spirits at Suomenlinna Island, a historic tourist site just off the city. After that it was back to the city and the tasks ahead. Time for long words and CVO-speak.

AEPF aims to bring all these voices from the ground to the official Asia Europe Summit (ASEM) and create alternatives to ASEM’s “neoliberalist agenda”.

ASEM would be to Asia and Europe as APEC is to Asia-Pacific and the US. Well, more or less. Heads of state, Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo, among them, are attending ASEM. ASEM consists of the member countries of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian countries China, South Korea and Japan.



AEPF (which I am attending) consists of NGOs and civil society groups from all European and Asian countries. Created in 1996, AEPF has had forums every two years that paralleled the ASEM summit. The last one was in Vietnam. These forums are meant to give a venue for CVOs in Asia and Europe to discuss issues that affect their respective regions. (Not to confuse this with AEBF or Asia-Europe Business Forum which is also going on.)

Asian and European CVOs have called for more civil society participation in ASEM but this is not happening. These groups have had to make their own parallel gathering in order to call attention to issues on the ground. Coming out together in a big way calls the attention of world leaders and decision-makers. The Philippines has a good representation in AEPF, most the non-communist left mostly, and why not, it is also the NGO/civil society hub of Asia.

As a bi-regional network, AEPF has indeed opened a new chapter in people-to-people relations and among CVOs in Asia and Europe. Socio-economic and political experts from both regions have recognized the significance of intergovernmental relations and concerted responses to issues.

Besides strengthening linkages in these two regions, AEPF has made lobby visits to ASEM member countries to bring up the Asian financial crisis and call for an Asia Monetary Fund, European development cooperation and the EU-Latin American regulation.

AEPF has also done research on the impact of economic instruments such as the Investment Promotion Action Plan and the Trade Facilitation Action Plan developed by ASEM.

There have been exchanges on privatization of water utilities in Asian cities and the involvement of European companies. The reconciliation process in the Korean peninsula and security issues have also been discussed in the past. The AEPF network has been expanded with the inclusion of Vietnamese groups and requests from Chinese groups for inclusion.

AEPF bewails the “narrow economic focus” of the ASEM process that results in the “severe marginalization” of key concerns such as human rights, equitable development, democratization and environmental protection. Government-civil society dialogue has yet to be concretized.

AEPF sees EU-Asia relations to be in an interesting stage. Both are seeking positions in the global trade and the geo-political state of affairs. For EU, it is the inclusion of new countries, deepening integration and major constitutional issues.

In Asia, things continue to unfold. There is the restructuring of the labor market, migration, deregulation and privatization of public services. Asia also hopes to be a fully integrated region with the establishment of East Asian Community modeled after the EU.

The question: How united could East Asia be with its “patchwork of political discord, territorial conflict and economic equality”? Asia has much to learn from the EU experience.

AEPF’s long-term goal is to establish itself as a leading forum for advancing a critical understanding of Asia-Europe relations through research excellence, policy formulation and campaigning. “Critical mass” is important if it is to sustain its interregional connectivity, expertise and collaboration. It hopes “to develop into a hub of networks with genuine national and international significance leading to multilateralism from below.”

AEPF’s target groups from below are trade unions, peasant and farmers organizations, food sovereignty networks, environmental movements, human rights and development groups, women’s movements, indigenous peoples’ movements, peace movements, debt and trade justice campaigns, academics and students. Throw in the media, parliamentarians, policy makers in government, and ASEM-related institutions. It’s a very potent brew.

Deliberations, discussions and debates are still going on among the stakeholders. More on the aftermath next time.

So much for long words and CVO jargon. Tomorrow, AEPF’s last day, there will be a meeting with ASEM delegates and the drafting of the Final Declaration. And a street carnival at the center of Helsinki.