Hello Dr. Elen:
 
Thanks for your email.  When we presented GKAL to UCLA on Oct 24, we used the GKAL road map to primary health care.  Key to the road map is consultation with the KB or Kapitbahayan, the very first step in the road map.  We told UCLA that the goal of such community participation is community ownership of their health, their house, their environment, their productivity, their education, their formation and training and their neighborhood association.
 
While we advocate and practice participatory development, we are faced with the reality of government.  It is to our credit that we have leveraged our communities to create a win-win situation for both government and GKAL.  The vaccines for our immunization program has been provided by the local government units (LGU).  GKAL acts as a go-between, with the children to be vaccinated on the one hand, and the LGU vaccine providers on the other hand.  It is a win-win situation.  In order to leverage our organization, and create such win-win situations, we became flexible.  Following the GKAL roadmap, as we reach the final stage/phase of the roadmap to primary health care, when the GK village begins to do outreach work and start anew the road map in another GK or non-GK community, our community leaders would have learned participatory development, leveraging and flexibility, an inclusive type of participatory development, which they learned from us.
 
Even as we seek to raise the human dignity of the poor, we also raise and restore our own human dignity through participatory development.  We are a witness to conversions, not only in ourselves, our advocates and volunteers, but also in our LGU counterparts.  Would it be possible to find such a change of heart and mind in the grant donor agencies and donor countries as well?  Is our dream big enough to include them in participatory development, in our journey towards liberation?  Is it possible to leverage ourselves and be flexible to arrive at a win-win situation between our communities and the grant donor agencies and donor countries, in the same way that we have already leveraged and been flexible with our own local government units?  Anything is possible, yes?  Especially, if we have done it in the past and it has produced win-win situations for all.
 
As we pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into His Harvest, in our very inclusive way, we open our hearts, minds and arms to anyone and everyone who may wish to join the Harvest to end world poverty and hunger, to restore the dignity of the human person, to heal our relationships with God, with one another and with God’s physical creation/universe.
 
We are all in this together, walang iwanan, mayaman o mahirap, donor agency o hindi. Ang nakasalalay ay ang kagandahan ng buhay na ibinagay sa lahat ng tao ng ating ating Poong MayKapal.  Sama-sama tayong makawala sa makasariling pamumuhay at mabigyan tayo ng kalayaan, maging sino kaman. Kailangan win-win para sa lahat. Inclusive, hindi exclusive.  Lahat tayo’y anak ng Dios, maging sino man tayo.  We seek to strive to reach a win-win situation.
 
I remember the liberating words of Mahatma Ghandi who sought to reach a win-win situation, even to the point of having a Muslim lead a predominantly Hindu nation, which eventually lead to his own assasination.  Mahatma Ghandi said that there is no cause that he will not die for, but there is no cause that he will kill for.  Such are the liberating words of the father of participatory development, who moved a whole sub-continent by his witness to his humanity and human dignity.  It would be a great privilege and calling to live by his example.
 
Take care, Dr. Elen, and God bless.
 
Victor