Buhay Pinata: On the Way to Making Waves

Nikki Arce

“This is the first university-based program I have heard of,” said Jean Ilio, Gender Equity Adviser of the Canadian Women’s Development Program, of Buhata Pinay, a new women’s development program being pioneered in Negros. The MA Class of Prof. Inday Ofrineo, Dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development prepared the CSCWD Audio-Visual Room for only forty persons, but approximately a hundred visitors flocked to the venue to attend Buhata Pinay: A Model Development Program for Women’s Rights Worldwide, a lecture-forum on the new women’s development program in the works, on September 7, 2007.

Dr. Christine Nielsen, one of the pioneers of Buhata Pinay, and a professor of international business and strategy at the University of Baltimore in Maryland, was invited to talk about the program and engage those who attended to extend their support to the program, especially to the research phase of the program.

Where It All Began

In one of the back pews inside the Unitarian Church of the United States, during one of those ordinary days when choir practice was becoming monotonous, Dr Nielsen was whispering in a thoughtful conversation with one of her church mates. They were talking about one of the most seemingly impossible things to achieve, world peace. When Dr. Nielsen’s church mate said, “We talk about world peace, and we keep on talking about it, but we’re not going to have world peace if we just keep on talking,” the two of them sat in a contemplative silence amidst the sopranos and altos of the church choir singing in the background.

The next year at the Unitarian Church National Assembly, Dr. Nielsen and her colleagues presented a study action that focused on the protection and promotion of women’s rights all over the world. They proposed a new model for the development of women that starts at the community level, but could still be used by all kinds of communities of different cultures in different parts of the world. The proposal was turned down, though, seemingly because the assembly thought the new project was not going to be feasible. But Dr. Nielsen’s groups did not go home disappointed.

Instead, they were challenged even more to make their proposal work, but they had to wait for another year for the next Church National assembly. The year they waited was not wasted. On the next assembly, Dr. Nielsen and her group came back up to propose their original plan, but this time, they came to impress. “We had our own spokesperson and some terrific people to head the organization we were putting up. And we also had a lot of partners by then, several women’s and community groups, and even the United Nations,” Dr. Nielsen said. They did that and put up an Internet site for their newly established organization, t-shirts with their logo on and other promotional activities.

By the time they stepped out of the assembly room, they were shaking hands and had just received the go-signal given to them by the Church to go on with the project. Two months after, in August of last year, they were on the plane to the Philippines.

Buhata Pinay – They Did It!

Buhata Pinay is a Visayan phrase that means “Do it Filipina!” The program was so-named because the pilot communities were in Negros. It is also the name of the new organization and its program that aims to bring women of all cultures, classes and ages an active economic participation within a sustainable environment, give them access to free or affordable education, health services, and safety facilities, and build and encourage community leadership.

Of course, the project’s first phase is the assessment of needs of the women of the community, where Buhata members gather women in the barangay hall, share stories and bring out issues affecting them and their family. “We were surprised to see so many women there. About 50 attended and many of them came down from the mountain despite the bad weather,” said Dr. Nielsen as she described the warm welcome given them by the women of Negros.

On their first three days in the Philippines, Buhata met with the leaders and members of the Women’s Institute of Negros in Dumaguete so they could move on smoothly to Phase Two of the program, the establishment of a social infrastructure so that the women in the community could communicate with each other. Aside from encouraging the everyday personal communications among women, Buhata also distributed to the women cellular phones to put up an online network so that the women could contact one another from wherever they may be. As of now, according to Dr. Nielsen, five women in the community already have cell phones.

Phase Three of the program consists of education, what Dr. Nielsen said the entry point of livelihood. Women, for them to be able to achieve and sustain an income-generating livelihood, need to have a grounded training in business and management, where they learn bookkeeping, human resources and operations. Along with this, Dr. Nielsen suggested workshops for alternative methods of livelihood, one of these would be a website created for the buying and selling of handicrafts made by women.

At this point, Buhata still hangs before they can move on to the fourth and last phase of the program, where a sustainable livelihood program is related and established, and education is continued so the women can go on working for economic sufficiency. It is also at this point where Dr. Nielsen asks for the support of the educational institutions. “We would like the help of a university in the Philippines, with a team or two of their students, to do research on this,” she said.

Room for Improvement

According to Sikap Buhay head Larraine Sarmiento, “This kind of program is not really new here in the Philippines. In Sikap Buhay, we have our own capability-building, personality and leadership-development, and capital-lending services.” What Buhata Pinay must do, she suggested, is to focus towards the poor minority groups in the communities. Consider for example the working women of Payatas. They earn income for their family by scavenging in the mounds for items they can sell to junk shops. But according to Aling Luz Riarex, 43, and has been scavenging ever since she was 14 years old, “Nakakapagod din ang trabaho namin. Hindi mo masasabing kumikita ka, di om rin masasabing lugi ka. (Our job is really tiring. And you can’t even say you’re getting any income from what you do, but you can’t really say you’re not getting any.),” At the end of the day, when they get home to their families, it is still them who do the cooking of whatever’s left for dinner, cleaning up the house and caring for the kids before they go to bed.

“At the end of the day, is it making women’s lives any better? What is happening to the gender division of labor?” These are the questions Ms. Ilio pointed out to Buhata PInay. For even if women earn enough from the livelihood programs established by development organizations, money will not be enough to get rid of the deeply-rooted idea that their husbands and male partners are not supposed to work with them in spheres outside the generation of income. For Ms. Ilio, economic services provided for women are not enough to uplift their lives. There must also be emphasis on the social services that women of all communities must receive.

In Paoay, for example, a town in the northern province of Ilocos Norte, women are the prime-movers of society. Because of the constant demand for the high-quality woven cotton products they use to create a living, the women of Paoay are the main breadwinners for the family. They would not need to participate in an economic development program like Buhata Pinay. But then again, at home, it is their husbands or male partners who sit back when housework has to be done. In doing business transactions with their high-profile, Manila-based clients, the women of Paoay represent their own businesses themselves; there is no need for go-betweens or middlemen. But at home, the women of Paoay still work for their own bosses, their husbands. “Syempre himdi ko na siya pinipilit na gumawa ng trabaho sa bahay. Gawa yun ng babae, at parang tulong ko na rin yun sa kanya. (Of course, I don’t make him do the housework anymore. That’s the woman’s job, and besides, it’s also helping him.),” said Aling Charito Cabusilan, leader of the Brgy. Nagbaclan Community Cooperative in Paoay.

Of course, Buhata Pinay is a newborn baby and has yet to settle down, and in the process of doing so, it can still learn a lot from existing women’s development programs in the Philippines for the program to truly contribute to the uplifting of women’s lives not only here but worldwide. ■