Sohoton Caves: Photo by Pol Lanting

III. Private Sector Interventions

Conservation efforts on the part of the private sector actually started long before the government saw the need to start coastal resource management projects. Although the first marine reserve in Southeast Asia was established in the Hundred Islands back in 1940, it was only 1974 when the Silliman University of Dumaguete established a well-managed marine park in Sumilon Island reef, which in 1980 was designated as a national park by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

This was managed directly by Silliman University in cooperation with the municipality of Oslob, Cebu to which Sumilon belongs. The island is located near the southeastern tip of Cebu island and has traditionally served as fishing grounds for residents from the towns of Oslob and neighboring Santander.

No fishing was allowed in the reserve, although it was allowed in the marine waters surrounding the island. To see to it that this was followed, the project hired a caretaker to monitor fishing activity and regulate the fishing in the area. There was absolutely no community participation involved as the area was used as a laboratory by marine biology students of the university.

But early on in the process of the park's formation, Silliman University conducted an educational campaign and sponsored a study of fishermen's attitudes towards marine conservation evidently to elicit their support. Not surprisingly, some fishermen resented the seemingly sudden restriction of their long-standing rights to fish in the entire Sumilon reef. They perceived the seas as open to all without restriction, and it was not clear to them who would benefit from the marine park. After a few years, however, many of them were convinced of the benefits of the marine reserve as it had increased fish population even in areas outside the reserve.

Still others continued illegal fishing in the area when the caretaker was not watching. But this was minor compared to the problem which surfaced in 1980 when a new mayor of Oslob, whose family was engaged in commercial fishing, raided the sanctuary with his destructive muro-ami fishing equipment. In a confrontation, the mayor said he was just trying to fulfill his campaign promise to take back Sumilon Island from Silliman, saying Oslob actually owned the island, not Silliman.

According to Alan T. White, these misunderstandings and lack of cooperation can be attributed to several factors: the university's creation of the reserve did not involve the community, the motivation of the community was misinterpreted as antagonistic to the needs of the local residents; the benefits of the reserve were not clear and this political problem was overlooked by both the mayor in 1974 and the university in the creation of the marine reserve.

"The subtleties of such arguments as improved fish catches over time are difficult to appreciate when benefits are long-term and not easily seen. In this case, an influential community leader, using strong but spurious argument, has influenced attitudes more easily than could subtle concepts, long-term promises or arguments based on actual data. "(White, A.T.)

Perhaps taking its cue from the Silliman experience, the idea of coastal zone management was picked up by the USAID in November 1981 when it sponsored a workshop on the issue in Manila. There it was suggested that fisheries could be better managed if it moved away from common property and centralized management to local management and property ownership. The government took up the initiative in 1984 when it started the Central Visayas Regional Project, a pilot project in regional development founded on the principles of devolution and community-based resource management. This was later followed up by the BFAR project in 1990 which went into its Fisheries Sector Program in 12 bays earlier mentioned. (Ferrer, et al.)

Meanwhile, in the mid-'80s, several NGOs already piloted CRM projects in several areas all over the country which enjoyed relative successes in setting up marine reserves and sanctuaries and addressing livelihood issues. We shall summarize these achievements in the various aspects of the intervention process and see which can be replicated in typical fishing village situations.

First, some observations on NGOs in the Philippines. It would be inappropriate to lump all voluntary organizations into just one or two categories. Voluntary civic clubs and organizations have existed in the country years before the term "NGO" became fashionable in development circles. Groups like Lions, Rotary, Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus and similar organizations have been introduced by American colonizers in the country to their local middle and upper class colleagues early in their regime in the last century, and these continue to this day doing all sorts of voluntary civic work, like providing free health services, distribution of relief goods, putting up public waiting sheds and similar projects where their names are prominently displayed. Although members of these organizations also like to include themselves in the list of NGOs, I would prefer to exclude them here.

Some NGOs may not agree with me here but private voluntary work focusing on rural development may have been a brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency during the time of Ramon Magsaysay who was noted to be an American boy. It was during this time that the Presidential Action for Community Development was organized together with the Four-H clubs essentially as counter-insurgency measures against the local communist movement then known as the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (also known as "Huks"). The PACD and Four-H clubs were of course government-initiated. But later groups, like the Federation of Free Farmers of Jeremias Montemayor and the Federation of Free Workers of Johnny Tan, both products of Jesuit minds, were ideologically of the same mould as their predecessors and were organized to counter the threat of communism. It was the era of MaCarthyism, the height of the cold war, and the attitude was perfectly understandable even if the so-called threats to democracy were somehow exaggerated. Student groups oriented on this ideological bent would also emerge in the late '60s and would follow Montemayor's tradition. These were also voluntary groups from which private non-government organizations would emerge in the '80s and carry on until the present.

On the other hand, groups with clearly Marxist-Leninist-Maoist orientation cropped up when the Communist Party of the Philippine was reorganized in the late '60s, and student groups having the same ideological bent also followed suit. Such groups would become prominent in street demonstrations against the Marcos regime in the '70s until the latter declared Martial Law in 1972, driving many student activists to the hills. When Corazon Aquino took over after the 'people power' revolt in 1986, she allowed greater "democratic space", which resulted in many underground activists surfacing and doing voluntary work among the urban poor, the workers and the peasantry.

Initially, these groups had no formal structure. Work was done on a voluntary basis with no financial rewards for the volunteer workers. This was also true among groups that emerged from the Montemayor-Ateneo tradition which by this time became known as the "Soc-Dems" (for social democrats who advocated parliamentary means to achieve social change).

With the internal debate which raged in the Philippine Left in the '80s, more groups were split along ideological lines and affiliations, each having its own analysis of the socio-economic and political situation and a perspective of the social change they hoped would follow. The formation of private voluntary organizations doing development work in the Philippines, also known loosely as non-government organizations or NGOs, thus followed these diverse paths, with varying approaches to the same problems, probably united only because each one thought something had to be done about the situation. According to reports, there were 18,000 such NGOs in the country in their heyday but there could be fewer now that external support is coming only in small trickles.

It is in this critical point of view that NGO intervention in the fisheries sector must be understood, their perspectives seen and their approaches assessed. As in other sectors, national organizations of fishermen cropped up following strictly ideological lines, and, like the NGOs, came up with their analysis of the fishing industry situation and their own programs of action and modes of intervention and advocacy work. It must be mentioned here that were it not for the advocacy work of these groups in the area of legislation, certain provisions of the New Fisheries Code favoring the small village fisherfolk would not have been included. This paper will not attempt to assess such a role. I will limit myself here to interventions being undertaken by NGOs at the community level.

In terms of experience, there are probably less than 50 documented case studies. So far, the only major attempt at a thorough documentation has been done by the College of Social Work and Community Development of the University of the Philippines in 1995, which came out with nine case studies of community based resource management projects in nine areas all over the country. Two were in Northern Mindanao, four in the Visayas and three in Luzon. These case studies spanned almost a decade of community based coastal resource management work from 1987 to 1994.(Ferrer et al.)

I would like to tackle at least seven major issues here: perspectives and analysis of the situation, collaboration with government agencies, entry points, data gathering methods, organizing and education, institutionalization, and livelihood alternatives.

Perspectives and analysis. Those NGOs with deep roots in the political movement of the '70s would most likely link the resource depletion issues to the overall drive to increase productivity in commercial fishing and aquaculture in tandem with the pressures of globalization and the entry of foreign capital into the local fishing industry, rather than simply blame the poor fisherfolk because of blast fishing. Most likely, too, these NGOs would cite the poverty of the village fisherfolk as one compelling factor that could drive them to resort to more desperate measures in attempts to survive the critical fish shortage.

An analysis like this would define the NGO's subsequent approaches, broaden the content of its education program to include not just the issues on ecology but the more pressing issues of poverty and fisheries policy. Its programs of action and mobilization would then embrace both the local issue of resource depletion as well the bigger policy issues which have to do with supplying fish to foreign markets and the increasing commercialization of the municipal fishing waters. Its thrusts in community and sectoral organizing as well as leadership development program would therefore take on a perspective that is beyond the confines of the villages where the resource management project is being implemented.

A look at the various perspectives of the NGOs and government agencies involved in CBRM would show such a perspective may not be there in the majority of them. A lot of them may be classified as the new breed of non-ideological, career-oriented and project-driven NGOs, working to implement projects funded either by government or external funding agencies with their respective development agenda. That sense of mission which characterized older NGOs are not found in these new groups, even if somehow their "mission statements" portray them as honest-to-goodness missionaries. A good example of these are those that get fat contracts with government agencies to do organizing work.

They perform the tasks assigned to them, organize as many groups as they can because there is quota imposed, and conduct as many seminars as required because they are evaluated on their performance of such tasks. They go through the motions of having these groups formally registered with a government registering agency - for "institutionalization" purposes - only to discover that a year after they leave the communities, the groups they organized are back to their old disorganized selves.(PFI unpublished report)

One such NGO operating in a Northern Mindanao province, The Network Foundation, Inc., was under a contract with BFAR and had to follow the process prescribed by the agency, conducting trainings, data gathering and organizing. It had a quota to fulfill - 56 new cooperatives in two years - and went through the motions of giving these the required cooperative education and registration with the Cooperative Development Authority, all because these activities were stipulated in the contract. But somewhere along the way, conflict between the TNFI and BFAR ensued. The latter intervened in the TNFI's organizing work, giving inputs that did not contribute to the overall organizing efforts. Field level BFAR officials started promising loan funds for the fishers to avail of with the intention of encouraging the latter to join the cooperatives. But when these funds were not forthcoming, many fishers backed out of the organized groups and no longer participated in the more important coastal resource management work. (Gauran, D., Seeds of Hope)

In situations when NGOs are under contract with government agencies having different approaches, it is often impossible not to comply with the prescribed procedures because of contract stipulations. In cases like this, NGOs become mere tools of government-initiated programs and lose whatever initiative they may initially have. But even private donors, for all their good intentions, may unwittingly push NGOs to commit themselves to activities which are realistically beyond the scope of the funded projects to accomplish, thus ruining the chances for more cohesive community groups in the long term.

On the other hand, the difficult financial situation of many NGOs can also explain why they allow themsleves to adopt such narrow perspectives in their work, become project-driven and enter contracts much against their avowed mission as independent nongovernment organizations. For unlike NGOs in developed countries (USA, Germany, etc.), most of those in the Philippines do not get financial support from private individuals but have to be funded either by foreign donors (with their respective orientations) or by government contracts. Hence, for all their noble mission statements, NGOs cannot be too choosy about where they get their support from. Goals and objectives can thus get distorted. Desired processes (like in organizing work) can get tangled up and suffer unwanted shortcuts. Still, a few foreign donors respect the local NGOs' autonomy and perfectly understand the latter's methodologies in dealing with communities, and this is where the best results can be expected.

Collaboration with government. At this point, the issue of collaborating with government becomes crucial. Given the analysis that government policies and institutions themselves are also part of the problem in coastal resource conservation efforts, how viable is it for NGOs to collaborate with government agencies? These agencies are of course the legitimate bodies that should be at the forefront of such conservation efforts because of their mandate. At some point in their work, NGOs must cooperate with these bodies. The very nature of NGOs shows that they are just temporary bodies that perform facilitative roles only because government agencies have defaulted on such roles.

The experience of a few NGOs involved in fisheries management is worth noting here. Tambuyog, an NGO which has been in the forefront of fisherfolk organizing since the early '80s, was able to organize a tripartite body (government, NGO and peoples' organization) in their project site in Barili, Cebu which served as a "stakeholders' forum" where resource use conflicts were addressed. (Guttierrez, etal., Seeds of Hope)

The Commnunity Extension and Research for Development (CERD) in Batangas also came up with a similar consultative body, covering a bigger scope of three municipalities in the province, with the cooperation of the congressman of the district. Whatever formal agreements the body adopted were incorporated in a memorandum of agreement which defined areas of cooperation in the conservation effort.(Melgar, et al., Seeds of Hope)

In the towns of Almeria and Culaba of Biliran province, the municipal councils came up with local ordinances that defined fishing boundaries, limiting fishing areas to those outside the marine reserves they have established. But these ordinances were drawn up after much prodding from the staff of Pagtinabangay Foundation, Inc.(PFI), the NGO which did work on marine conservation in the island province from 1993 to 1997. Similar consultative groups were also set up in each town under different names. (PFI unpublished report)

In the four cases, the PFI, CERD and Tambuyog field workers had to do a lot of conscientization work among the local officials in much the same way that they did with the members of the community organizations. But none of the three were under contract with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in such conservation projects, which probably accounts for their relative independence from the said agency. They were under no pressure to organize a certain number of groups in a very limited time frame like the TNFI in Northern Mindanao, nor were they obligated to report on their achievements to any government body. In such instances, cooperation and collaboration with government agencies could be on equal footing where government bodies can treat other members of the forum or consultative group with the same respect that they would treat their colleagues in government service.

That, of course, presumes that the groups sitting with government bodies, the leaders of the community organizations and representatives of the NGOs, have been sufficiently trained to articulate the issues and concerns at the communities they represent. Such collaborative mechanisms however should not tie down groups or force them to keep silent when areas of agreements have been violated by any member of the group or by those close to government officials who are members of the consultative bodies. If unresolved, conflicts like this may easily led to the forum's breakup and could only aggravate the problem of resource depletion.

There is no doubt that such collaborative mechanisms were functional at the height of the project implementation. However, we still have to find a mechanism which has been sustained after conservation projects undertaken either by government bodies or NGOs have withdrawn from the project areas. This should not mean though that such mechanisms are not workable or sustainable in the long run. The sustainability of such mechanisms as the FARMCs or the CBRMCs would depend a lot on the attitude of the local government units which would have the responsibility to lead, on the agency which is officially tasked with resource protection, and on the people's organization whose active participation in these bodies is just as important as those of government representatives. The stronger and more capable the people's organization, the greater the chance that the mechanism will survive.

Entry Points. This issue of entry point is perhaps given the least importance by government agencies and some NGOs, given their approaches and the often disastrous results of such approaches. To the government agencies concerned, going into the community is simply one of those unimportant starting functions in the process of getting projects done. A typical approach is to inform the village head (barangay captain) about a project, call a meeting of the local leaders and other members of the community. Public assemblies are usually the venues where villagers are informed about the project and token consultations are conducted. During such meetings, most of those who attend are attentive but keep their silence. Only the government officials and the local leaders may talk, not because the villagers are not allowed to speak up, but rather because most community members would rather keep their mouths shut. It is a customary preference.

To quote Chambers, these local leaders in the coastal communities are "less poor and more influential. They typically include progressive farmers, village leaders, headmen, traders, religious leaders, teachers and paraprofessionals…they are the most fluent informants, who receive and speak to the visitors and articluate the village's interests and wishes, their concerns which emerge as the village's priorities for development." (Chambers)

Conversely, the majority of the poor are "often inconspicuous, inarticulate and unorganized. Their voices may not be heard at public meetings in communities where it is customary for only the big men to put their views…they do not speak up. With those of higher learning, they may even decline to sit down, preferring to stay at the back of the hall or outside where they are least seen. Weak, powerless and isolated, they are often reluctant to push themselves forward." (ibid)">

This approach would not deviate from the traditional political structures in such communities where decisions are left to the village officials, who in turn simply follow instructions handed to them by the implementing government agencies. All along, the agencies involved think they are implementing a bottoms-up approach because they have conducted meetings involving the village folk. Some of these agencies in fact often have the gall to claim "people's participation" in their projects. It is the easiest way to do their job, no doubt, but it is also the surest way of not getting their message through to their intended beneficiaries.

At the back of this approach is the attitude of the government officials that they are the repository of knowledge and technology and that therefore they know a lot more than their beneficiaries even in matters which relate to the latter's livelihood and well-being. This arrogance and misplaced self-esteem can easily be found in many government bureaucrats, big or small, and the bigger they are, the more swell-headed they become. On the other hand, because of their low social status, village fishermen hold their silence while the officials are around, saying their piece only when the visitors have left. Such arrogance is also occasionally found among NGO workers who now see their jobs as careers.

This approach will never produce the desired results from the community because in the first place it creates a social gap between the community and the worker, a barrier bounded by class attitudes. Breaking it is the responsibility of the worker who must start by drastically changing his own outlook of his community work, treating it as a mission rather than a career, and changing his attitude towards the community. That it is not a blank canvas to paint on his theories of social change but primarily a rich mine of knowledge from which he must learn while unlearning his own biases. And this cannot be achieved in a single visit or several visits done hurriedly by the worker but rather by immersion in the community. This means living in the community with the people and interacting with them in their daily strugglles for survival. Only then can a community worker gain deeper understanding of the situation not only in its economic terms but even its social norms, metaphors and symbolisms, and power relations, and gain an integrated understanding of the village which is never possible in hurried visits and quick weekly meetings. Only then will the community open up to him as he builds up his own credibility among its members, a status which ensures that any future inputs the worker imparts on its members will not fall on deaf ears or infertile ground.

The lack of immersion of community workers is one major reason why many projects initiated by both government and non-government organizations reap disastrous results. Failing to establish open lines of communication with the community, field workers often cannot understand why the inputs they provide during meetings and trainings do not sink into the people's consciousness or why people are seemingly resistant to suggestions coming from them. Or why their brilliant proposals can make no advances in their attempts to mobilize their intended beneficiaries.

But immersion can be difficult for anyone whose idea of a profession is an airconditioned room in the city or at least a comfortable chair in an office of a government agency. Even field workers whose jobs are supposed to be in the field find it unthinkable and downgrading to their professional status to live in the village. After all, one of the strongest reasons why parents send their children to college in the Philippines is to remove their children both physically and culturally from the backwoods that is rural life.

The College of Social Work and Community Development of the University of the Philippines has developed the concept of a "social laboratory" which requires students to live in communities as part of their course. In their immersion, they develop a deeper understanding of the community, learn about its norms, and understand the social relationships and power structures. This college could be a rich source of rural cadres to work in the fisheries sector.

Likewise, the example of Vietnam about sending volunteers to work in the rural areas from 1995 to 1997 to hasten the modernization of agriculture may also be studied, although I strongly doubt its applicability under Philippine political conditions. The Vietnamese model presupposes the existence of a highly centralized form of government which has the prerogative to mobilize its college graduates and young professionals to serve in the countryside.

During this period, the young intellectuals, mostly university and college graduates, helped introduce new technology and techniques to local agricultural production, forestry and fisheries; joined the planning and construction of infrastructure; contributed to raising local people's educational level as well as cultural and spiritual life. In the meantime, they helped increase the management, technical and cultural personnel and improved the labour quality in these regions.

Data gathering methods. This is another area where methods have varied and where results spelled the difference between literal interpretations of social realities and one which has shown a deeper understanding of fishing villages and their inhabitants. Among government agencies and their favorite NGOs, with their insensitive surveys and crude attempts at rapid rural appraisals, this activity has tended to be mechanical, revolving around statistics and numerical figures.

Thus, poverty is measured in terms of income and expense on cash basis, but we know perfectly well that all economic activities at the village level do not always translate themselves into cash. A bunch of camote (sweet potatoes) harvested along with some vegetables on the way home from the farm and immediately consumed are never recorded in notebooks by farmers. Much less is the fish caught at night and consumed in the morning for their breakfast. Formal surveys which ask the farmers or fishermen to indicate their monthly income will never turn out with the right figures because all these small, day-to-day activities never go beyond the dining table into their memory banks.

The miracle of their continued survival in the midst of severe economic crisis which plagued the country for the past 30 years only shows all the economic surveys which have been done all these years were not able to come up with the right estimates. For surveys can only be good for items which are immediately quantifiable, like the number of households in the village, the types of houses existing, the services and facilities that are there and the number and kind of boats and equipment that fishers use. But for other economic and social data and other types of relationships, immersion in the communities would still matter a lot.

A project in Bolinao, Pangasinan, initiated by the partnership between the UP Marine Science Institute, UP College of Social Work and Community Development and Haribon Foundatiion, came up with a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) in coastal communities in their attempt to "understand the resource system and social system." They held a three-day training training for that in 1992 to allow the participants to apply and adapt the principles, methods and tools of PRA to coastal communities. Later, they worked in the villages there, adapted and refined the methodology, with cycles of theoretical inputs, field practice, group discussions and synthesis were undertaken as the research progressed during the two months of data gathering.

In their initial stage of the PRA, the project staff conducted "walk-throughs" to familiarize themselves with the communities and develop contacts, gathering secondary data in the process. Besides talking to the formal leaders in the village, they also got in touch with school teachers, religious and civic leaders who were tapped as "research partners." The team later on conducted semi-structured interviews and focused group discussions using the guidelines they formulated. The latter were conducted among farmers, fishers and women. They gathered data on the status of resources, livelihood and income source, past and present development initiatives, issues, problems and opportunities. To verify these, direct observations were made.

To provide feedback and validate the results of the PRA, the staff had a validation workshop where the staff and members of the community collectively analyzed the data and determined the causes of the problems prevailing in the community. It was on such an analysis that they came up with a plan of action.

According to the inter-disciplinary group which did the activity, the process proved helpful in constructing a comprehensive picture of the resource status and of the people's socio-economic conditions, generating an awareness of the various possibilities and challenges for coastal resources management and served as initial focus for mobilizing the leaders and members of the community. (Ferrer, et al.)

While this method has somehow done away with the structured survey type of data gathering, it has one prerequisite though. It should never be done unless those involved in the PRA have properly immersed themselves in the community and have established the trust and confidence of the community members. PRA cannot take shortcuts otherwise it will miss the whole point in the exercise. For instance, villagers will never fully participate in the workshop to validate the findings of the group doing the PRA unless they are secure with the group. At this point, let me remark that this is one area where government extension workers, who cannot do away with their usual arrogance, will always fail. Until they step down from their lofty pedestals, government extension workers will always be denied the wisdom of the villagers.

Organizing and Education. Just when is a group of people really organized? Development practitioners in the fisheries sector have provided different interpretations of what is an organized group. The most simplistic is that of government which claims that groups are organized once they have been given the right set of trainings and registered with any of several government agencies that provide private associations their certificates of registration. Education or awareness of the issue is often measured in the number of trainings conducted. These agencies never seem to have understood the real meaning of organization, which explains why the "institution building" aspects of government projects are often contracted out to NGOs in recognition of the "expertise" of the latter in that type of activity.

But even among NGOs, the process of organizing is still one of several areas of debate, given their varied backgrounds. Those which were set up as voluntary organizations by activists who had previous experiences in organizing work among peasants and workers during the Marcos years tend to be more process-oriented, preferring to do things slowly at a pace often dictated by their timely assessments of levels of consciousness of the communities they are organizing. In their analysis, villagers have this uneven levels of understanding of their social realities and the problems that they face and attempts to mobilize them by holding seminars and trainings alone seem to be inadequate.

Apart from the issue of social acceptance, the contents of these trainings, whether on environmental problems or issues relating to poverty, have to be processed in ways that would make them sound urgently relevant to their listeners. This is why this issue of fisheries conservation has to be tied up to their own poverty situation. The impact of resource depletion has to be explained in terms that would be perfectly understandable to their here-and-now concerns, not to future possibilities. People faced with the stark realities of survival in crisis situations would have no room in their minds for conjuring up dreams. This makes the process of education very slow, indeed.

Some NGOs have combined exposure trips and cross visits with conventional discussion groups and standard trainings to inculcate an awareness of conservation. In the initial phase of the organizing work of Pagtinabangay Foundation in the towns of Almeria and Culaba, its community organizers and contact leaders made trips to the project area of CERD in Daram, Samar so that the contacts could see for themselves the effects of a marine sanctuary on marine life. There the leaders were able to discuss with the community about the latter's project, and when they went back to their own villages, they were able to relate their experience in Samar and talk convincingly about the positive effects of having a marine reserve.(PFI report)

Similar activities were undertaken by Tambuyog when it implemented its project in Barili, Cebu and by Haribon Foundation in San Salvador Island of Zambales. The latter went to Apo reef in Negros to observe the marine reserve in the area. The trip was reportedly an "unforgetable experience" to those who joined it, and members of the core group were accordingly encouraged to come up with the same strategy to restore their damaged marine ecosystem. This project later on became an exposure area for the Bolinao Coastal-Resource Management Project in 1994. The fishermen leaders from Barangay Arnedo who came for the cross visit "came home totally convinced that it was possible to rehabilitate the damaged resources in Arnedo, saying it could be done."(Seeds of Hope)

To villagers whose unwritten motto is "to see is to believe," exposure trips can indeed hasten the process of awareness raising more than any set of structured trainings and seminars. This part of the organizing process, however, is just a small step in the rather unpaved path of organizing work among the fisherfolk. The more crucial parts are those which involve their mobilization and the development of a core of leaders from their ranks. It is in mobilization where people's levels of awareness and commitment are tested. Unfortunately, it is not often that a community organizer gets the chance to mobilize the stakeholders on timely, relevant and major events, like apprehending illegal fishers in the municipal waters or confronting armed commercial fishing boats.

Most of the time, mobilizations have to do with meetings, conducting information campaigns, attending group discussions and similar seemingly insignificant activities. But it is these small activities where consistent positive attitudes surface. To the experienced organizer, it is here where he can spot potential members of the core group which he would develop as the center of leadership, out of which which the emerging organization will evolve. Again, one cannot accurately assess leadership potentials in the community if one is detached from it like an outsider who pays the community only occasional visits.

It is this core group which an organizer provides informal inputs to and visits at home, sometimes sleeping at their houses if need be, eating of their food, partaking of their work and accompanying them to fish at sea to develop their trust and understand them more fully. Building a core group goes deeper than a hundred lectures given during seminars, providing the organizer opportunities to interact more fully with the stakeholders. Here, he is both a student and a teacher, learning from them and helping them sum up their wealth of experiences which are not usually written about in journals or talked about in academic circles.

The development of this selected core is a product of a series of inputs as well as actions which tend to firm up their commitment, help them crystallize concepts and enable them to articulate these in their own language and metaphors. For this task, the organizer has to be an analytical and perceptive educator who can "read" their levels of awareness and degrees of commitment so that he can build on these. This core takes the place of a community organizer who is an outsider and ensures that when the project withdraws, there are people left around who are equipped with organizing skills. In a sense, the members of the core make the project sustainable.

Building the bigger community or sectoral organization is even a harder task as it involves repeating the process undertaken with the core group. But the organizer must set his limits, his minimum and maximum goals. Some agencies have attempted to lay down certain standards. Government agencies like BFAR have put up "quantifiable indicators" to measure the viability of fishermen's organizations and laid down certain minimum requirements - like the number and kind of seminars attended, legalization and registration - in order to assess the viability of the organizations and their preparedness to manage their fishing grounds.

The Bolinao multidisciplinary project has outlined five areas for assessing the "extent of legal and social institutionaliztion" of groups at the community level. These are: