ASPIRE DEVELOPMENT MODEL

In compliance with the registration rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we had to change the name of our association to SAMA KABUHAYAN. Our name for short will be SAMA-KA, meant to sound like an open invitation for everyone to join in. Since membership is free, everyone who has signified their intention to join so far via email or text is already considered as members. Registration forms will be issued at a later date, as well as the identification cards that are optional. Membership is open to all those who need help (beneficiaries) and those who are giving help (volunteers).
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Katrina Segundo wrote: Thank you for your report of an incident involving discrimination against a Person with Disability (PWD) which was posted on the FilAm Forum Yahoo Group. I have furnished the leaders of the Filipino PWD Sector with this email on the hope that we can help this aggrieved person and notify the responsible government agencies for their action re the matter. Let it be known that my sector is not fighting for special treatment but rather for equal opportunity. I would be interested in learning more about PWD advocacy especially in relation to employment rights and livelihood opportunities. By the way, I am not blind but I am a director of Philippine Blind Union (PBU), the only sighted person in the board.
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Thanks to the commitment of QUEDANCOR President Nelson Buenaflor, a contact person has already been assigned to attend to the needs of loan applicants who are referred by "Gulong ng Kabuhayan". Mr. Patrick Manigque +639178506093 landline 3739711 is the new SAMA-KA coordinator. Per our agreement with Nelson, applicants will be processed by Patrick first before they are endorsed to the regional offices. Nelson and Patrick conducted the first joint briefing for SAMA-KA members last week at the QUEDANCOR Center, for the benefit of our members Ms. Rosita Palmes and Mr. Florencio Lozada.
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As an offshoot of my public service and developmental communications work, I have come up with the “ASPIRE” model, a model that would guide all the programs and projects of SAMA-KA. “ASPIRE” is an acronym for the triple strategy of Active Sharing (AS), Policy Intervention (PI) and Resource Expansion (RE). AS includes any form of sharing one’s time, money or influence or any combination thereof. PI includes any advocacy work in the local, regional or national levels. RE includes any form of expanding access to public services and legal rights. Hopefully, volunteer lawyers would become active in the PI component. In like manner, I also hope that volunteer engineers would become active in the RE component, since there are infrastructure issues involved.
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I am looking for volunteers from all over the Philippines who could serve as the advisers of SAMA-KA members in various locations who have already decided to go into business (or to expand their existing businesses) or to apply for employment. As I mentioned in an earlier bulletin, there are two types of members, namely the beneficiaries and the volunteers. There are three types of beneficiaries, namely those who want to earn money (income) from jobs or businesses, those who want to save money (savings) from product discounts and economy tips and those who would simply want to benefit from donated goods and product samples (freebies). On the other hand, there are also three types of volunteers, namely those who would like to share their time and skills, those who would like to share their time and money, and those who would like to share their time and influence.
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Ka Edong Del Rosario, a medical doctor with a Master in Public Health working in Misawa, Japan wrote to give support and encouragement to SAMA-KA. Rolando Bermudo wrote to say that he has a cooperative producing tilapia, and he would like to put up a wholesale outlet in our QC public market project. Imagine the savings potential of that!
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Consistent with the Policy Intervention (PI) component of ASPIRE, we are now looking for volunteer lawyers who could draft the legal framework for two advocacies that could significantly increase home ownership among the low income groups, as well as provide them with livelihood. The first advocacy would encourage and grant incentives to manufacturing companies that would agree to outsource some of their production needs to communities within their vicinities. The second advocacy would encourage and grant incentives to housing developers that would agree to build completely knock down (CKD) homes in their own land holdings.
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Outsourcing is a popular trend that is sweeping the business world today. In some parts of the world, manufacturing companies are already outsourcing their component requirements to nearby communities, and it would be great if this practice could be popularized in the Philippines. Based on our national experience so far, beneficiaries of housing projects found it difficult to meet their mortgage payments because of the shortage of livelihood in their immediate communities. Hopefully, the outsourcing-cum-housing (OCH) approach would partly remedy this problem.
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Housing components made from 100% recycled materials are now available in the local market. It would be a boon to the low income groups if they could build their own homes using these materials, “LEGO” style. Towards this end, volunteers Weng Serrano (a civil engineer) and Glen Openiano (an architect) are already working on CKD home designs that would be given away free of charge by SAMA-KA to qualified members. The livelihood-cum-housing (LCH) strategy is an old idea that should be revived. I supported this strategy when I was with the Ministry of Human Settlements (MHS). Imagine what would happen if we could mix the LCH strategy with the OCH and CKD strategies. First things first however, we need to create the legal framework to make this possible.
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Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairman Dr. Carlito S. Puno (DPA) appears to be sleeping on his job after failing to act on a letter that I sent him four days ago, requesting assistance for Mr. Louie Crisostomo. He is a polio victim from Tarlac but he can walk with his wand. He has an AB Economics degree and a Master in Public Administration (MPA) degree, with units in Education. He has submitted his application to Tarlac State University, but he has gotten no response either. Do our State Universities really discriminate against people with disabilities (PWD)? This seems to be the case, and CHED could be guilty of this as well. There is really a need to clear up government policies about employing PWDs, and agencies like CHED should lead the way, rather than block the process.
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Secretary of Health Dr. Fransisco Doque appears to be sleeping on his job too, after failing to act on a letter that I sent him four days ago, requesting assistance for Mr. Diosdado Taguran, a security guard from Cotabato who needs help with medication for his tuberculosis illness. He had previously approached a health center in Mindanao but was not given assistance, now it is Doque himself who ignoring him. Joining Doque in dreamland is Secretary of Social Work and Development Esperanza Cabral who was also sent the same letter about Mr. Taguran, but there is no reply from her either. I asked her staff to give me her mobile number, but they would not give it to me, apparently trying to protect her from being bothered with this kind of social work. How much longer will Mr. Taguran have to wait?
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Mr. Ronald San Juan is a visually impaired person (VIP) from Bombongan, Morong, Rizal. Wanting to have a gainful employment, he applied for a medical transcription training provided by Nova Foundation, only to be told that he needs a Screen Reader to join the training. He is hoping to get some help from Microsoft, and I am going to relay the request to my contacts with that company. Could anyone else help Mr. San Juan?