Today I learned...: concentrate on the goals, not on interpersonal conflicts.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

concentrate on the goals, not on interpersonal conflicts.

Last weekend, I learned from Kuya Tito that "People, because of being together acquire interpersonal conflicts, it is natural. Our work is to bring them out the interpersonal conflict by making them look back to their vision and goals, and from there debate on how they could reach their goals."

Last Saturday until Sunday, we had our Fiscal Year Assessment and Planning at ACCESS Philippines. For 2 days, we sat with each other, debated and thought of our next activities for our programs in the coming year. It was held in our field office in San Jose, Mitla Pampanga.

[Our Humble Field Office in Pampanga]

Each staff in program areas - (1) Perez, Alabat Island, Quezon, (2) Smoky Mountain, Tondo and (3) Mitla, Porac, Pampanga, presented their assessment points for this year. It took us the whole Saturday for sharing assessment points.

[ACCESS-Philippines Staff discussing assessment points of programs in Pampanga]

Fortunately, it was also the feast of San Jose last Saturday (March 19, 2011). We were invited to the house of the baragay captain for lunch. I learned that Pampanga people try their best to prepare many and delicious food every feast day which is good for the visitors. However, it is bad for them since they enter into debts just to reach these hidden expectations from visitors. On our side, we enjoyed the food (and for once, ti's not true that "there's no free lunch"). On the other side of things, they spent too much.

[Kuya Archie getting food from the buffet table.]

We visited one house of our beneficiary after lunch, and found this:

[This is a stove made out of hollowblock.
Creativity of impoverished people come from their everyday difficulty in living.]

After lunch, we walked around the barangay and visited the Mitla Elementary School which ACCESS' helped in building.

[Kuya Archie and Ate Lisa in roaming around. Kuya Archie was checking the grass and told us, the fruit from that grass can be eaten.]

[While walking around the experimental farm of Pampanga, I met him.]

The next morning (Sunday), we continued with planning programs for FY 2011-12. Each program area team of staff sat together to clarify objectives, activities, persons in charge and time frame. The whole morning, and until 3:00 in the afternoon was alloted to sharing the plans so that staff from other areas could give their opinions and ideas on improvements of each program. This is a wonderful learning venue for each program area staff, even for us, the members of Secretariat.