Untitled

|SANIBLAKAS
FOUNDATION

SANIBLAKAS FOUNDATION
PROGRAM THRUST FOR

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT & HARMONY (HDH)

LIGHT-SHARE PROGRAM
Lambat-Liwanag.

PROJECT TO BUILD A NETWORK OF CENTERS FOR EMPOWERING PARADIGMS

The symbol above, designed as the centerpiece artwork for this book's cover, has been adopted as the logo of the SanibLakas LightShare program under the program thrust for Human Development and Harmony.

Documentation Book of First General Conference

A Gathering of Light

for Empowerment

First Lambat-Liwanag Conference

on Empowering Paradigms

hosted by UST-SRC on October 26, 2001

Edited by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes and Ernesto R. Gonzales

ASI-ACA PLM-URCSC PNU-SSD PSTC-Bgo PUP-HRO UPM-MSP UST-SRC

Co-Published by:

University of Sto. Tomas - Social Research Center

and the SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation

Manila

2002

Prologue: A New Life for You and This Material? by Joydee C. Robledo

Welcome Remarks: It’s UST’s Honor to Host this Conference by Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales

Message of Greeting: A Synergy of Light for the People’s Empowerment by Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Keynote Address: Let Us All Be Gatherers and Sharers of Light by Dr. Noemi A. Medina

Network Formalization: Signing the Collective Commitment by the members of the Network Council

Conference Context: Expanding ‘We’ Facing a Mountain of Tasks by Prof. Enrique D. Torres

Pledge of Commitment: ‘Titipunin Namin, Ipalalaganap, at Isasabuhay ang Liwanag!’

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THE UNIVERSITYof Sto. Tomas feels doubly honored with this opportunity to provide a foreword in the written version of the Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms. It has been a great honor to host the conference last October 2001 and be a tool towards the realization of the plans of the Lambat-Liwanag Network.

This book indeed embodies the "Gathering of Light and Empowerment" as expounded during the conference. It represents a distillation of the ideas and provides nuclei for a fusion or elaboration of ideas. It collimates light emanating through the fervent interest of the various network members and generates a potent means for empowerment through diverse means.

The context of the conference is very timely. The need for new paradigms for thought and action is manifested in the problems facing the world at this time. New paradigms have to be encouraged and new approaches have to be adopted. However, these shifts have to be preceded by an intensive and systematic study of available options. The collaboration of several academic institutions will indeed facilitate the accomplishment of this task.

The input from the various members of the Lambat-Liwanag Network could provide a wide spectrum of ideas that that can be exploited for the evolution of empowering paradigms. This book records the range of views and concerns set forth through the presentations and discussions during the conference. Through this publication, we foresee that more light will be radiated to enable more people to realize new potentials and novel approaches in human development.

GREETINGS of prosperity of the mind, body and spirit to one and all! And, of course, for everyone who wants to enjoy a bit, if not a lot, of comfort in life, may it also be a wealthy year ahead. Welcome to this space where knowledge is abundantly shared and wisdom is fully acknowledged.

How did you come to be holding this material right now? All readers of this book are expected to have widely varied answers to this question. Some simply belong to institutions of learning listed in the directory of that network secretariat based at the University of Sto. Tomas–Social Research Center (UST-SRC) in Espaňa, Manila. Others may have earlier manifested their desire to participate in the process of developing and refining one paradigm or another in the Network’s enumeration of “The Empowering Paradigms.” Still others would whisper that they just couldn’t say “No” to a friend who was too eagerly insistent that they should read this book.

But quite many of you would admit that you did not really plan to get hold of a copy of this but, here you are reading the prologue, as if some kind of force “led” you to it and even moved your hand to get past the cover. How many times have you experienced being led by a seemingly accidental series of circumstances and occurrences to something that you would later deem to be very important in your career path or life focus from that point on? Would you later realize that it was one of those “Celestine Coincidences”? and is not at all accidental? That is something we cannot know for sure right this moment.

Whatever circumstances caused this interaction between you and this copy of Lambat-Liwanag: A Gathering of Light for Empowerment, we are confident that this book will make an impact on you and your life and even on the lives of those whom you greatly influence. The book amplifies the serious challenge raised by the Lambat-Liwanag Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms against the dominant models or patterns of thought and action that are divisive and disempowering.

We predict that readers of this book would go through some serious and significant self-retrospection. You’d likely ask yourselves: Have I been contributing to dehumanization of people by the way I look at things, by the way I do my work? Have I been participating in the forging of my own chains? Have our thoughts and actions really been contributing to our collective upliftment or to its opposite? Have my own views on these paradigms been logically and spiritually coherent? Don’t I need such consistency in recognizing and projecting my integrity? Answering these questions squarely and in succession can indeed change our lives!

SanibLakas Foundation is proud to have brought together such intelligent and energetic leaders and institutions as those who founded the Lambat-Liwanag Network on February 14, 2001. We congratulate the Network itself and the UST-SRC for jointly convening the First Conference for these paradigms on October 26, 2001, with more than fifty participants from various educational and other institutions, or less than nine months after its founding.

And we also congratulate the Network and its partner, the UST-SRC, for coming out with this book that carries quite a big sampling of empowering paradigms-related handouts that we expect to make a big impact on almost all, if not indeed all, of its readers. In reacting with happy resonance with, or even with indignant rejection of, ideas carried by this book, you might be in for starting a series of changes in paradigm, or changes in outlook, or changes in basic attitudes, or the proverbial “change of heart.”

This book celebrates that First Lambat-Liwanag Conference in October 2001, where light was gathered and shared among dozens of participants from all those institutions. Now, just past the first anniversary of the Network, light is being spread again, this time among all the thousands of readers the thought-provoking contents of this book can possibly reach, to gather and later to share more and more light. The entire society is being gifted with an offered opportunity to partake of this Synergy of Light. And you are also being given the opportunity to say and also amplify within the same process what you think and feel, all in the honest pursuit of what is good in the reality of our lives.

Lambat-Liwanag is mainly an academe-based network. It is a synergy mainly of institutions of the mind, calling out on millions of minds to pay heed to the whispers of the heart and spirit. We seek to have a strong synergy of hearts and minds of a big and continually growing number of people so we can all finally free ourselves from disempowerment and fragmentation.

After having been brought together by “Celestine Coincidences,” you and this material will likely begin a new life. The possibilities are immense, as our interactions on these paradigms will greatly enrich us all in the process. This undertaking of the SanibLakas Foundation is yet another endeavor to make the principle of synergism live and work within and among us through empowering paradigms that seek to “unite than divide,” as well as to “liberate than restrict.”

As light-gatherers and light-sharers, may we all keep up this conscious effort of coming together and of trying to discover how best each one could live with empowered and renewed spirits, as we all come into fruition. Shared success is success multiplied. And the work has barely started.

Come and share your own ray of light. And join in happily watching the gradual but glorious sunrise of our synergized wisdom.

ESTABLISHED in 1979, the Social Research Center is the research arm of the University of Sto. Tomas for the Social Sciences. As an integral part of the University, the SRC envisions itself to be a “partner in the realization of the University’s three main functions of teaching, doing research, and rendering community service.” Its broad objectives are to conduct and promote pure and applied research on relevant issues, to foster a research atmosphere in the academic community, and to support planning and policy-making in the university through institutional studies.

As the UST research program is recently upgraded by new infrastructure, staff development and over-all administrative support, SRC can vigorously carry out its vision in the mainstream of social research and development in the Philippines. A pro-active and integrative dimension of social studies is evolving especially now that research undertakings at UST are consolidated within the united hub of a multi-disciplinary research complex.

The initial progression of social research is envisioned to focus on the economics of endogenous science and technology, industry, society and ecology. The initial targets of social research are economics of productivity, and culturally-rooted equity and ecology. The initial thrust is specifically pointed to the transformation of Philippine society towards a more genuine total human development and harmony.

Therefore, this initial thrust of social research is global by orientation but culturally rooted by approach in the different dimensions of socio-religious-cultural studies, sustainable development and economic development dimensions of globalization.

(1) Sustainable Development and Ecological Anthropology – This study program aims to balance growth orientations of economic development with equal emphasis to the sustainability of ecology and endogenous community.

(2) Socio-Religious and Socio-Cultural Studies – In brief this program consolidates the baseline social research program of the SRC in the areas of church and religion, children and youth, older persons and indigenous culture.

(3) Poverty and Women in Development – This undertakes study of both local and global issues in the total eradication of global poverty with the women in particular as the strategy of development research and program development.

(4) Economics Research in Technology, Productivity, Equity and Ecology – These economic studies aim to assess the total integration of endogenous science and technology to Filipino productivity and industrialization.

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WE NOW have a network of light-gatherers and light-sharers, committed to help empower our fellow humans by freeing them from those divisive and self-limiting patterns of thinking and behavior. These old paradigms have gone unchallenged for centuries but they are now being brought up for critical reexamination under the glaring light of reason and inspiration.

This is the LAMBAT-LIWANAG Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms. ‘Lambat’ is the Filipino word for network; and ‘Liwanag’ our word for Light. This network, mainly academe-based, was convened by the synergism-oriented SanibLakas Foundation under its overarching program thrust for Human Development and Harmony (HDH).

People from all walks of life, especially those of the Academe and those working with education-related organizations, institutions and agencies, are invited to join the Lambat-Liwanag Network in the way most suitable to their nature and capabilities, as the network researches, refines, discusses, validates, propagates and mainstreams the paradigms of thought and behavior most helpful for the full flowering of the human potentials, for individual self-actualization and the continuing collective evolution of human civilization. Its challenge: Dare to be pioneers with us in this wide-eyed quest deep into the yet uncharted waters of new millennium.

An Academe-based Network

This network embraces research centers and equivalent entities in different universities and schools, mostly in Manila, with definite plans for nationwide expansion. The five founding centers, all in the City of Manila, are: Social Sciences Department, Philippine Normal University (PNU); Social Research Center, University of Sto. Tomas (UST); University Center for Research, Seminars and Conferences, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM); Manila Studies Program, University of the Philippines-Manila (UP-M); and Human Rights Office, Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP).

The network was later joined by the Philippine Science and Technology Center (PSTC in Baguio City, recently renamed as Sentro ng Agham Pilipino); and the Applied Cosmic Anthropology Program of the Asian Social Institute (ASI). During the First Lambat-Liwanag Conference for Empowering Paradigms held at the University of Sto. Tomas in October 2001, three more schools manifested through representatives their decision to join. These were the College of Community Health Development amd Management (in Tanay, Rizal), Colegio del San Juan de Letran, and the Philippine Christian University (PCU).

Efforts and processes are underway for Lambat-Liwanag to be joined by equivalent entities within Adamson University (AU), Assumption College, De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde (DLSU-CSB), and the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU).

For a much broader reach within the Academe, Lambat-Liwanag has started establishing close contacts with such wide groupings as the Education Network (E-Net), Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), Environment Education Network (EEN), Philippine Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PASCU), and the Catholic Education Association of the Philippines (CEAP), as well us with key officials of the Department of Education, (Dep Ed) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd).

Beyond the Academe, we have already enlisted the participation and support of various non-government organizations (NGOs), especially with their respective paradigm-shifting advocacies in the fields of human rights, sustainable development, health, justice, peace, gender relations, families, technology, aesthetics, governance and economics. Entities that seek to participate on account of only one or a few of the paradigms are to be considered “outer core” members, with their own consultative councils to be set up.

And among all these, and even well beyond our shores, we are utilizing the Internet to bring us in close touch with academic and other relevant entities throughout the Philippines and around the world. We are also preparing to launch a quarterly journal publication, called LightShare, to serve the entire light-sharing network.

Participatory Processes

The convening foundation, named SanibLakas (Filipino coined word for synergy), envisions this entire effort to result in a social atmosphere most conducive to the enjoyment of dynamic human harmony. Such harmony does not preclude even heated debates, but such contentions of thought can be handled best with the overarching attitude of mutual respect and the earnest quest for the Truth. We have designed processes that would be consistent with such vision. The “Lambat-Liwanag” endeavor is therefore widely participatory in all its aspects. What the Foundation currently lacks in material resources is made up for by its consistent and creative application of the synergism principle in highly-consequential endeavors such as this one.

The participatory nature of the processes is ensured both by the very mission of the convening body (promotion of synergism and building of actual synergies) and the multilateral character of the Network Council with each member-entity represented in the Council.

At present, this Network Council is composed of:

Dr. Noemi Alindogan-Medina (chairperson, Social Sciences Dept., PNU) Network Council Chairperson

Prof. Enrique D. Torres (chief, Human Rights Office, PUP), Council Network Vice Chairperson

Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales (head, Social Research Center, UST), Secretary-General

Dr. Romeo M. Barrios (head, University Center for Research, Seminars and Conferences, PLM), Member

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes (ASI; president, SanibLakas Foundation), Network Convenor (non-voting)

When the number of voting members of the Council shall have reached ten, these members shall elect from among themselves an Executive Committee to continue meeting monthly on the behalf of the full Council which shall then schedule quarterly meetings. Our predisposition is to inform, invite and involve all interested and relevant entities, and the actual breadth of participation at any given time is constricted only by the limitations in our resources.

Lambat-Liwanag started with centers in only five schools in February 2001, and since then, its paradigm titles and bullet points have elicited much interest among many and much wider circles both within the academe and among civil society organizations. Proper invitation processes, as well as discussions in the decision-making bodies of entities already invited, are both being developed.

Every step of the way, from paradigm refinement to paradigm package completion and popularization, the efforts have been designed to be multilateral. Each participating entity is to have access to the complete resource holdings from the research efforts of all, through the Internet and through hard copies in the “Lambat-Liwanag Empowering Paradigms Special Shelf” in its own library.

To recap, Lambat-Liwanag is an “expanding we.” Only five people came to the founding meeting called by the network convenor representing the SanibLakas Foundation at the Social Sciences Department office of the Philippine Normal University. Months afterwards, two more schools joined formally. By the time the First Labat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms was ending in the late afternoon of October 26, 2001, three more schools and more than 50 individuals pledged their commitment to the network and its tasks. We can only expect more growth after this book gets circulated and paradigm-specific conferences are held.

Light, after all, has the powerful natural tendency to spread.

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SANIBAKAS FOUNDATION is a formalized synergy of individuals who are dedicated to pursue the vision of human development and harmony through synergy, and who have teamed up among themselves and with like-minded and like-spirited people to pursue program thrusts, programs, and projects that fulfill the mission of promoting synergism consciousness and building actual synergies in various areas of human concern.

Synergy-oriented individuals

SanibLakas members are synergy-oriented individuals. They had been discovered and seen to have independently adopted as part of their respective missions in life the promotion and conscious application on day-to-day and long-term challenges to advance human development and harmony. They fully recognize that while commonalities are bonding elements, diversity is a source of dynamism for synergies and is therefore a resource to be valued and managed well.

Formalized synergy

SanibLakas Foundation is a compact organization, with a definite membership, and membership-recruitment and development systems, management and coordinative functionaries and an elected leadership, with definite terms, respective duties and prerogatives to make for healthy teamwork. It has acquired official status as a foundation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its status and systems make it a formalized synergy of persons who freely decide to work within its embrace. This accounts for for the foundation’s stbility in distinctions, priorities and work styles.

Vision: Human Development and Harmony

SanibLakas envisions a society where human development is advanced faster and most comprehensively in an atmosphere of harmony, as sustained by the level of human development previously attained at any time, especially of human maturity with all people manifesting a predisposition to synergize among themselves and with Nature. In such society, individual human beings are continually empowered in their spirituality, self-discovery and self-actualization, and entire sections of the population are empowered to guarantee continuing social and economic upliftment for broader human development and harmony.

Mission: Twin-Tasks for Synergism

SanibLakas Foundation exists to perform these twin tasks: (1) to promote synergism consciousness and (2) build actual synergies. To promote such consciousness, each member is mandated to pursue continuing personal and shared education on this principle. To help build synergies, each member is expected to attain a strong inner synergy as a person (integrity of body, mind and spirit, integrity of thoughts, words and deeds), and to exemplify the ways of synergism in interacting with other people (shared-self mindset in self-actualization). The foundation stands to orchestrate and synergize the members’ efforts in these mission taks. This organization is mission-driven and synergy-powered.

Members teaming up among themselves

Accepting the invitation to join SanibLakas Foundation as members is the basic way these people team up among themselves even if they are working in separate programs. Only persons who believe in team-play in various synergism-oriented efforts and who are therefore ready at least to communicate with team-mates frequently concerning their work and personal growth as synergy-builders, are to be invited and sworn-in into the organization. SanibLakas fully respects and institutionalizes the right of each member to decide how best to pursue what was in the first place her/his own personal sense of mission. However, if the choice is to basically work alone, this organization is not the one for them to join.

Members teaming up with kindred spirit

SanibLakas is a believer in team-ups. Because its programs and projects are synergism-oriented, it is confident that persons most dedicated to the pursuit of these programs and projects make for good co-equal teammates for collegial bodies leading program or project work or even for core groups initiating such work. (SanibLakas members and these individual partners differ only in that the fact the former are fully conscious of the directions and progress in the various other programs of the Foundation, and are also conscious to discover and develop persons to recruit as SanibLakas Foundation members, in line with the above criteria.)

The Program Thrusts, Programs & Projects

Contribution to Human Development and Harmony (HDH) is the overarching program thrust of the Foundation. A complementary and contributory program thrust covers efforts for Integrated Empowerment for Social and Economic Upliftment (IESEU). Under these two main program thrusts are closely-interlinked programs and projects.

The HDH program thrust focuses impact on individual human empowerment from enhancement of spirituality, self-discovery, self-development and self-actualization. This program believes that human development and harmony can be validly likened to a pair of feet making baby steps forward. Further progress in either one can be made only on the basis of progress already attained in the other.

1. LightShare is the program for the study and sharing of synergism basics and application for integrated development. This covers: (a) Lambat-Liwanag, a mainly academe-based research, refinement and comprehensive promotion of empowering paradigms as alternatives to dominant ones that are divisive and disempowering; and (b) Sanib-Sinag, the encouragement and facilitation of personal-experiences-based sharings and reflections through earnest human conversations and through meditations.

2. Sanib-Sining is the program for the promotion of “synaesthetics,” the discovery and development of capabilities in aesthetic creativity and appreciation in as many people as possible. This is a consciousness campaign based on the Credo for Synaesthetics.

3. Sanib-Sigla is the new program for developing physical fitness in the context of holistic health and collective effort. It promotes the Holistic Health paradigm with balanced growth of health in all human dimensions (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) to sustain the growth in each of these dimensions.

4. The “Earth Synergy” program is contribution to planetary synergy-building, by promoting inter-species and interracial harmonies mainly through a poem on Earth Synergy for the New Millennium, with translations in more than a dozen languages, and a multi-nationality ceremony called “Handshakes and Hugs for Earth Synergy” to propagate its message in solemnity.

B. Program Thrust for Integrated Empowerment for Social and Economic Upliftment (IESEU)

The IESEU program thrust focuses on education, network-building and training to help empower entire sectors and sections of the population for social and economic upliftment contributory to broader human development and harmony.

1. Program for organizing and network-building to build strong synergies for environment conservation. We have formed the SALIKA (SanibLakas ng Inang Kalikasan) to recruit the hitherto unmobilized common people for environmental activism and promote the spirit of team-play among members of existing environment organizations. SALIKA is offering free seminars to its members forming teams among along lines of work, such as education, media, law enforcement, and various ecosystems. It is the co-convenor (with the CLEAR group) of a monthly environmental forum at Kamayan-EDSA.

2. The program of education on synergism for associative economics mainly through cooperatives. The Cooperative Education on Synergism (CES) entails a long-term education process with cooperatives about the synergism principle. We are promoting an education campaign for wide and vigorous implementation by the cooperatives themselves focused on the principle of synergism. The principle, after all, is at the very essence of cooperativism.

3. DakiLahi is the program for national synergy-building among Filipinos worldwide to promote a keen sense of history and national mission and provide protection and to build a sustainable prosperity for all. Regaining this sense of nationhood entails a process of awakening, collective self-discovery of aspirations and perspectives of the various ethno-linguistic, socio-political, religio-spiritual, locational, civic, occupational, age and gender groupings, all to be addressed in synergy with one another and in the full context of the nation’s holistic perspectives.

4. SanibLakas is starting to build a program institution named the Citizens’ Rights for Education and Assertion Trainings for Empowerment (CREATE), which offers education and training courses in organization development and effective communications, as well as other aspects of comprehensive advocacy of the people’s rights.

The SPSP cluster of programs seeks to run special programs and projects contributory to promoting synergism consciousness in support of both program thrusts.

SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation co-founders (per SEC document, August 1997): Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, Marie R. Marciano, Joydee C. Robledo, Mila R. Garcia, Romy Lee B. Ancheta, Araceli C. Ocampo, and Elizabeth C. Roxas.

SanibLakas ng Taongbayan, Inc. co-founders: Reyes, Ocampo, Ancheta, Marciano and Garcia (per SEC document September 1996)

It’s UST’s Honor to Host This Conference

Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales

Director, Social Research Center, University of Tomas; and;

Secretary-General, Lambat-Liwanag Network

IT IS the honor of the University of Sto. Tomas to host this conference. UST is the first university in this part of the world, antedating even Harvard in the U.S., and producing such illustrious alumni as Jose Rizal and Emilio Jacinto. But it was criticized by Rizal, the ilustrado propagandist, the voice of the enlightened in his time, criticized directly and also indirectly through his Fili, for being in his view the embodiment of what education should not be. Jacinto subtly criticized it by emphasizing the equality of all humans in his Kartilya ng Katipunan.

UST-SRC is proud to report that the University has since changed much of that. This happy development is now put to poetic symbolism by the honor we have in hosting this conference for the development and mainstreaming of empowering paradigms on our patterns of thinking and behavior.

Alluding the to UST of his time, Rizal described microscopes glistening behind closed glass panels in storage-display shelves. The students were then made to merely behold with awe the instruments of science instead of being able to use them to behold with much more awe the throbbing cells of life itself. Lambat-Liwanag, in contrast, seeks to develop all kinds of social microscopes and distribute them among the people so we may all view ourselves in the microcosm of how each ordinary Filipino thinks, behaves, and lives.

Likewise, unlike most of our mass media that only reach the people with their copies and signal, Lambat-Liwanag will reach all the schools and all the people with microphones and tape recorders the better to draw out their observations, their coping ways, their wisdom and gather this light to be enjoyed by all, in the form of the wholistic, interconnected, liberative and harmonizing, and therefore empowering, paradigms.

There is an urgent need for all academic institutions in this country to upgrade their research work. Thus, there is need for dynamic directioning of research work toward people-based primary research, toward the empowering essence of education, and toward concertedness that can eliminate much duplication of efforts and counterproductive competition.

When SanibLakas Foundation called the meeting of the Lambat-Liwanag founding core, I am proud to have been among them, and I am ever thankful to have gotten to meet for the first time and get to work together since then with wonderful people who have actually been my counterparts as research heads of the various schools that are practically UST’s neighbors within the City of Manila.

That meeting at PNU last February 14 was actually long overdue. But SanibLakas saw the firm basis for us in that group to meet and work together to start a network that would grow and continue growing.

As I welcome you to this venue, I thank you all for validating the fact of that growth by being part of that growth. We were only a handful in this ambitious effort for empowering paradigms when we had our series of meetings at PNU, UST, PLM and UP-Manila.

Despite our limited time and start-up resources, with the Lambat-Liwanag network having absolutely no funds as of yet, the number of people gathered here is a very loud assertion of a reality to be discussed later by Prof. Eric Torres, that Lambat-Liwanag is an expanding ‘we’!!!

On behalf of UST and of the conference organizers, I am honored to say, Welcome to the First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms! Welcome to the Lambat-Liwanag Family!

A Synergy of Light for the People’s Empowerment

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

President, SanibLakas Foundation,

and Convenor, Lambat-Liwanag Network

SANIBLAKAS was founded in 1996 as a non-stock, non-profit corporation and reorganized as a foundation the following year. Growth between these two years was not mainly in the status, but more importantly in our awareness about the synergism principle itself, its many nuances, and its application to the quest for human development and harmony.

The close team-up mainly within the central core of the organization gave birth to the SanibLakas focus of synergism applied to human consciousness and behavior. This focus became the basis for the organization to start deserving to carry its name as the Tagalog coined word for synergism and synergies, it became the basis for the clear formulation of our two-fold mission, and it became the basis of orientation-setting for all SanibLakas program thrusts, programs and projects. It has also become the basis of our survival and growth.

I would like to acknowledge now the presence here of my close-in teammate especially during that period, and even up to now, Ms. Joydee Cahanding Robledo. (applause from the body) Joydee, please acknowledge their applause. She didn’t expect this, Friends. Thank you!

Donated human and material resources of synergized SanibLakas members and individual partners have been the fuel of this organization, allowing us to do much work with no organizational funds to speak of.

The two-fold mission of SanibLakas is to widely promote consciousness of the synergism principle and to build actual synergies. It is actually only one mission, a synergy of two inseparable and mutually-strengthening folds. Each component of any bigger synergy is, after all, a smaller synergy. It has its own inner synergy, its own “innergy,” the dynamic unity of diverse parts. Two folds of our reason for being are enfolded into each other: the expansion of consciousness or thinking of the synergism principle among more and more minds, and the actualization of the principle into concrete teamwork and harmonies on the ground. These are concrete actual synergies like the fast-growing Lambat-Liwanag network itself. SanibLakas breathes and thinks synergism, and does work to build synergies. SanibLakas is synergism, it is itself a synergy. To think, preach and do teamwork and harmony is to be teamwork and harmony.

The empowering paradigms you will consider in workshops this afternoon all envision synergies in various areas of human life and consciousness. The spirit within has whispered to us that human synergy should be breathing in all those aspects of our human living and being. But observations on dominant patterns of thinking and behavior have been telling us that these patterns, these paradigms, have been dividing us and disempowering the great majorities.

And so, SanibLakas came up with a set of empowering paradigm titles, each with a handful of “bullet points,” and convinced a handful of people who were heading social research centers or equivalent units in their separate universities, to come together in an effort to develop, refine, popularize and mainstream the empowering paradigms. And so, less than nine months ago we formed Lambat-Liwanag – a handful of people with about the same number of sheets of paper containing those empowering paradigm outlines that are almost the same as those that you find in your conference kits this afternoon. Almost the same, because we have started working on those outlines, adding two new paradigms, refining a point here and a point there, and starting to write out in paragraphs a whole lot of assertions, analyses and references, as well as to gather related literature on them, that have since started to breathe life into these paradigms. The related literature items that we were able to reproduce have been given to you as paradigm-specific handouts. There are actually more such materials in our possession, but we have been unable to reproduce all of them for all of you in time for this Conference. We will do so afterwards by including them in the documentation of this Conference.

But all these materials can never by themselves breathe life into the empowering paradigms being developed and refined if Lambat-Liwanag were unable to grow beyond being a small group of people who have already been, and continue to be super-busy in their respective offices even without this task. You are the ones breathing more life into this network. You have come to this Conference and will shortly discuss and validate the paradigm outlines, in the process starting to enrich it. The handful of people, all super-busy with other concerns, has now drastically expanded into a much bigger team of more than 50 people, all super-busy with other concerns! That is a very big expansion. After the work of this Conference and of the paradigm-specific conferences we will hold next year shall have been done and documented and popularized Lambat-Liwanag will not merely have a very big expansion, we are going to have no less than an explosion! If it were to have sound, fans of Einstein might also consider calling it another “Big Bang”!

Building a synergy of minds even just among five people is very difficult even if also very rewarding, especially the very intelligent brains that we gathered to form the initial core. In building synergies of minds, and more so in optimizing them, we have to have everyone given the full opportunity to contribute original ideas, as well as ideas that agree or disagree with those of the others. And it has not helped any that we’ve had hectic schedules and therefore big limitations on collective quality time for meetings. We managed to do what we have been able to do so far, and that has started our growth and expansion. How do we now endeavor to build a synergy of minds not only of five people but of fifty? Or of a thousand people scattered all over the country with varying degrees of commitment to participate? We will use many various ways, a synergy of channels of communication and discourse, and we will manage as well. Wala na tayong atrasan dito sa ating “big bang”!

We just have to keep in mind our basics: our firm commitment to human empowerment and harmony; our sense of intellectual honesty and the rigors of scholarly discourse; our commitment to academic freedom and basic mutual respect for one another’s ideas; synergy in the entire effort. We are determined to eventually mainstream in the academe –and in society as a whole – those paradigms that empower and harmonize the people. We will not waver or even drag our foot on this endeavor, but neither are we going to hurry and take shortcuts that will compromise the quality of our output. We will do this the cooperative way, the saniblakas way, the sanib-galing way! Let each of us do one’s share, let each of us express one’s views keep our expectations proportional to our readiness and ability to contribute to this synergy.

SanibLakas decided in September 2000 to launch the light-sharing program based both in the academe and on profound sharings of personal experiences. By February of 2001, or five months later, the founding network council of Lambat-Liwanag was born; today, or less than nine months after February, we are holding this First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms. SanibLakas Foundation can only be overjoyed, even as it braces itself for more work here and in other programs. And you have come to join us in working celebration: The LightShare explosion for full human dignity and harmony is about to begin right here. Right now!

Let Us All Be Gatherers and Sharers of Light!

Dr. Noemi Alindogan-Medina

Council Chair, Lambat-Liwanag Network

and Chair, Social Sciences Dept., Philippine Normal University

WE ARE the LAMBAT-LIWANAG Network of Centers for Empowering Paradigms a network of light-gatherers and light-sharers, committed to help empower our fellow humans by freeing them from those divisive and gravely self-limiting patterns of thinking and behavior. These old paradigms have gone unchallenged for centuries but we are now bringing them up for reexamination under the glaring light of reason and inspiration.

‘Lambat’ is the Filipino word for network; and ‘Liwanag’ our word for Light. This network, mainly academe-based, was convened by the synergism-oriented SanibLakas Foundation under its overarching program thrust for Human Development and Harmony (HDH).

Social Science Department, Philippine Normal University (PNU); Social Research Center, University of Sto. Tomas (UST); University Center for Research, Seminars and Conferences, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM); Manila Studies Program, University of the Philippines-Manila (UP-M); and the Human Rights Office, Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP)

We have recently been joined by the Philippine Science and Technology Center (PSTC) in Baguio City and the Applied Cosmic Anthropology Program of the Asian Social Institute (ASI). Efforts and processes are underway for us to be joined by equivalent entities within the Philippine Christian University (PCU), Adamson University (AU), De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde (DLSU-CSB), Sta. Isabel College, Letran College, Assumption College, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasig, and the Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU).

For a much broader reach within the Academe, we have started establishing close contacts with such wide groupings as the Education Network (E-Net) and Environment Education Network (EEN), Philippine Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities (PASCU), and the Catholic Education Association of the Philippines (CEAP), as well us with key officials of the Department of Education (Dep Ed) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

Lambat-Liwanag will embrace as inner-core network members all the academe-based, and some non-academic entities, that will each commit to work on most, if not all, of the paradigms, and recruit as outer-core network members or network partners all other entities that will each commit to work on any one or a few of the paradigms.

Among all these institutions, organizations and agencies in the Philippines, and even well beyond our shores, we are utilizing the Internet to bring us in close touch with academic and other relevant entities throughout the Philippines and around the world. We are also preparing to launch a quarterly journal publication, called LightShare, to serve the entire light-sharing network.

The Lambat-Liwanag Network envisions a society with total human development and harmony as encouraged and enabled by the mainstreaming of unitive and empowering frameworks (paradigms) of thinking and behavior.

As a project organization of the synergism-oriented SanibLakas Foundation, the Lambat-Liwanag Network takes up the mission of rigorously developing and effectively promoting the empowering paradigms as a distinct contribution to the full attainment of human development and harmony.

Lambat-Liwanag has now stood up as a bright beacon of seeking and sharing the empowering light. As chairperson of the Lambat-Liwanag founding network council, and coming as I do from the century-old Philippine Normal University, which has the responsibility to be the institutional teacher of the country’s teachers, I dare declare this call addressed to all, whether within or outside this hall: Let us all be seekers of empowering light, and let us all be light-sharers. Let us all be students, and let us all be teachers, more appropriately to be called learning facilitators! Be with us, stay with us, in the way most suitable to your nature, priorities and capabilities, as we all research, refine, discuss, validate, propagate and mainstream the paradigms of thought and behavior most helpful for the full flowering of the human potentials, for individual self-actualization and the continuing collective evolution of the human civilization.

Dare to be pioneers with us in this wide-eyed quest deep into the new and yet uncharted waters of new millennium. Come to the beacon of seeking and sharing the empowering light! Be part of this beacon!

A Firm Agreement to Build Lambat-Liwanag

By the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council Members

MEMORANDUM of Agreement (MOA), which was studied and agreed upon prior to the Conference, was signed before the assembled participants of the First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms. Signing on each of the three pages of eight copies of the document were Dr. Noemi A. Medina for PNU-SSD, Prof. Enrique D. Torres for PUP-HRO, Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales for UST-SRC, Prof. Bernard Karganilla for UPM-MSP, and Engr. Faustino Mendoza Jr. for PSTC-Baguio.

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, Lambat-Liwanag Network convenor, who drafted the document, signed as witness.

(The document was signed immediately after the Conference by the two other Network Council members who were not present at the Conference, namely, Dr. Mina Ramirez, President of the Asian Social Institute and director of its Applied Cosmic Anthropology Program, and Dr. Romeo M. Barrios, Head, University Center for Research, Seminars and Conferences, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila.)

1. The Lambat-Liwanag Network of Centers for the Empowering Paradigms shall be mainly Academe-based. Entities that are based in school institutions or are clearly identified as extensions thereof shall comprise the majority of signatories to this Memorandum of Agreement. Withdrawal of Academe-based signatory-entities from this Network shall necessitate its replacement with an equal number of such entities if such withdrawal causes the Academe-based signatories to become the minority, the necessary number of “last-in” non-academic signatories shall be made to temporarily inhibit themselves from voting during the Network Council meetings until a sufficient number of new Academe-based signatories shall have joined the Network.

2. Each member-entity of “Lambat-Liwanag” shall (a) be known as a “Bahay-Liwanag,” with prominent public display of its identification as such, with proper signage and an actively used and publicly accessible bulletin board on its own and of the Network’s activities; (b) locate and reproduce holdings of existing literature pertaining to the “Empowering Paradigms” for display in a special “shelf” or section of its own existing library or mini-library and for sharing with equivalent libraries or mini-libraries of the other member-entities; (c) encourage the generation of new materials to promote consciousness about these paradigms and continually refine them; (d) conduct conferences, symposia and seminars in coordination with the other member-entities; and (e) actively participate in publishing and circulating the LightShare Journal by subscribing and by promoting subscriptions especially among libraries, units and organizations within its sphere of influence. Each signatory-entity shall conduct formal education and encourage informal education on the paradigms among all its personnel, focusing on those that are most relevant to their personal concerns and patterns of behavior.

3. Heads of entities with general concern for all or most of the “Empowering Paradigms” shall form the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council, with a chairperson, a vice-chairperson, a secretary-general and a treasurer to be elected by and from among the Council members for a term of one year. Heads of entities with concern for only one or a few of these paradigms shall constitute the outer core of the Network, and join consultative and coordinative paradigm-specific cluster councils.

4. As funds permit, “Lambat-Liwanag” shall create and operate fellowships, professorial chairs, special researches, book-publishing and other projects to promote the collation and dissemination of materials on the “Empowering Paradigms.”

5. As funds permit, “Lambat-Liwanag” shall hire personnel for regular work, and sub-contract work on special projects. Prior to its having its own juridical personality, the convenor organization, namely SanibLakas Foundation shall undertake the hiring and sub-contracting processes.

6. These agreements shall be binding on the institution being represented by signatories hereto. A signatory institution may formally withdraw its signature to this Memorandum of Agreement for substantive reasons submitted in writing to the Council chairperson or vice-chairperson for publication in full with comment by the Council. Substantive reasons shall not include changes in the appointment of the head of the entity. The Council may, on the other hand, decide by majority vote to ask a signatory-entity to withdraw its signature herefrom on the basis of a documented pattern of non-compliance with these agreements and publish in full the comment from the entity concerned if such comment is submitted to the Council chairperson or vice-chairperson not later than ten (10) calendar days from receipt of such request for withdrawal.

After the signing ceremony during the Conference, three school representatives declared their respective schools’ decisions to formally join the Lambat-Liwanag Network as member-entities, thus bringing up to ten the number of actual members, with these three pending formalization. These were the Philippine Christian University and Colegio de San Juan de Letran, both in Manila, and College for Community Health Development and Management in Tanay, Rizal.

The ‘Expanding We’: Facing a Mountain of Tasks

Prof. Enrique D. Torres

Council Vice Chairperson, Lambat-Liwanag Network

and Chief, Human Rights Office, Polytechnic University of the Philippines

AS CLARIFIED in the earlier talk, the Lambat-Liwanag Network exists for ..developing, refining, popularizing and mainstreaming the empowering paradigms. These are paradigms for thought and action that would unite people and give them options to freely choose among, and help enable them to implement their individual and collective choices. This will have to entail having to face a challenging mountain of tasks that I shall now present to you in an organized manner.

This can only be a participatory process all the way, in deciding things, in making plans, in actually working to pursue our objectives. But while the participatory nature of our work cannot give this network the option to reverse these aims, such participatory process will allow us to collectively choose what method or combination of methods would best carry forward this advocacy.

There will be efforts to continually expand the base of participation and to continually refine the technologies of participation. The present locus of wisdom we now endeavor to seek is the hearts and minds, the very experiences, of the ordinary Filipinos. They are actually the undocumented and grossly underrated scholars and experts on life, with both their positive and negative experiences.

When we say “WE CAN DO IT!” we are conscious of the very expandable meaning of the word “WE”. Dadami pa tayo! We started in a meeting of a mere handful of people at PNU last Valentine’s Day, we are now more than 50 in this hall, and therefore definitely we are now more than just a handful.

Our Conference this afternoon is itself a process, which will be explained to us a little later by Prof. Bernard Karganilla. Then, today’s general conference will be followed by a whole lot of paradigm-specific conferences. And all these conferences, with the publication of their documentations, will be but part of a long process. It is very important to situate this Conference clearly within the context of this long and broad process.

This whole Lambat-Liwanag process will revolve around the following general and specific tasks, which will involve various types of entities, and various forms of discourse, all to be bonded together under the rigorous requirements of intellectual honesty and the commitment to emancipate our people from all shackles of divisive and disempowering ways of viewing and doing things.

After hearing it all , we will have to take a deep breath, soul-search a little, and then convincingly tell ourselves: kaya natin ang lahat ng ito! Basta’t sama-sama tayo, napakahirap man ay kaya rin nating gawin! I say this now so we would not be overwhelmed or intimidated by the immensity of the work ahead.

I. General Tasks:

A. Collation and Generation of Literature

To collate existing academic, policy and other literature related to each of the empowering paradigms and of their specific points, and to generate new literature on them.

B. Paradigms Development

To develop a user-friendly, academically-rigorous, modular, and comprehensive presentation effectively promoting each of the empowering paradigms against divisive and disempowering paradigms.

C. Paradigms Promotion

To disseminate widely the empowering paradigms and mainstream them among the academic, policy-making and other public communities.

II. Specific Tasks:

A. Collation of Existing Literature on the Paradigms and their Divisive and Disempowering Counterparts

1. Survey of physical and electronic collation of books, book abstracts, monographs, excerpts, etc. promoting or describing, or arguing for or against, any or all of the empowering paradigms or their counterparts in dominant or other belief systems.

2. Building up of bibliographical data-bases and reference systems for all items.

B. Generation of New Literature for the Empowering Paradigms

1. Encouragement of new writings (like researches, etc.) for the Empowering Paradigms especially from persons and institutions active in the respective fields of these paradigms, and inclusion of all these in a special collation.

2. Conducting surveys, interviews and field experiments and documenting these for inclusion of all these the same special collation.

3. Convening of conferences on each of these paradigms to generate position papers, reaction papers, and publication of proceedings and eliciting further responses, and inclusion of all these in the same special collation.

C. Development of Mechanisms for the Sharing of All Holdings

1. Physical and electronic reproduction of all physical holdings for the Empowering Paradigms shelf in the libraries of each of the Lambat-Liwanag Network institutional members and for the Network’s web site.

2. Development of index and cross-reference systems on all pertinent holdings of network members that have not been physically collated, with faxing and hyper-terminal systems for bilateral sharing transactions.

3. Development of password-secured web pages for inter-member sharing and free-access web pages for much broader public sharing.

D. Effective Public Promotion of the Empowering Paradigms

2. Publication of a periodical journal possibly in tandem with the SanibLakas CHOSEN Sites Project

6. Development of plans for lobbying with government and other policy-formulation bodies, for mainstreaming and adoption purposes.

Lambat-Liwanag will expand to work together in developing the paradigms and mainstreaming these both in education and in the formulation of public policy. But all this work can only be given full significance with the growing number of common people who shall have started adopting these paradigms and living them in their own daily lives.

Of course, the immediate challenge is for us here to start living these paradigms in our own personal lives. Let us not only gather the light from mind to mind and let us not only spread the light from mind to mind. Let us BE the light, the empowering light, by our own day-to-day empowered and harmonized lives.

When we say “WE CAN DO IT!” we are conscious of the very expandable meaning of the word “WE”. Dadami pa tayo! We are also conscious that to “DO IT” is to BE it, to LIVE it.

Simultaneous Paradigm Workshops

Prof. Bernard Karganilla

Member, Lambat-Liwanag Network Council

and Convenor, Manila Studies Program, University of the Phils. Manila

GOOD AFTERNOON! I am tasked to explain what we will do now, exactly how we are going to accomplish the very significant first step we have set for today in the long process of gathering, sharing and spreading the Light of the empowering paradigms.

During the registration period each participant already chose which paradigm to focus on. That already accomplished the first step for the workshop session of this Conference. We are now going to break up into paradigm-specific workshop groups. So, all participants will look for their respective groupmates, those with the same numbers as theirs on the nametags we issued based on the individual choices. We will now designate specific areas in this hall for the workshop discussions, and turn the chairs for group members to face one another. Those who cannot find their groupmates, please approach us so we can integrate you into another group, either of the paradigm most related to the one you chose or to the paradigm of your second choice. You may also present, as an individual participant with no groupmates, a response and resolution on the paradigm of your original choice.

Once assembled, each group will choose who would facilitate and who would document. The main guide for discussion is the list of bullet points enumerated under the paradigm title. Please try to respond as a group to each of them, try to ascertain whether or not the points are valid and whether or not they are relevant to the paradigm itself. For most of the paradigms, we were also able to provide paradigm-specific handouts. They are with you to enrich your discussions.

You will also be provided with a standardized draft resolution for the conference to approve in principle the paradigm title and bullet points as written now, to suggest to the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council to add specific bullet points arising from your discussion, and to modify the styling of one or a few of the existing bullet points. It’s up to the group what it would report to the plenary session. But since we are not deciding things with finality, we suggest that you report both the consensus points and the minority views, indicating them as such, and explaining the basis of each.

During the plenary session, a representative of your group will summarize your discussion, present your proposed resolution and move for its adoption by the body. Before this Conference closes, a synthesis will be presented to this body by me and my colleague, Engr. Faustino G. Mendoza Jr. who heads the Philippine Science and Technology Center in Baguio City and represents that school in the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council.

After this First Lambat-Liwanag Conference, the workshop groups which will be transformed and later on be expanded as Lambat-Liwanag paradigm groups. Such paradigm groups will play a vital role in preparing and convening the paradigm-specific conferences, within the long process earlier explained by Eric Torres. If there are any further questions. Please approach us or Ding Reyes, the Lambat-Liwanag Network convenor representing the SanibLakas Foundation.

The Workshop Discussions

Plenary Session was suspended and the workshop groupmates sought out and found one another in their designated areas of the hall. While participants from the same schools or organizations spread themselves among various paradigm groups, a group of students from UST, who had been called to be walk-in participants by a poster they saw in their college building, decided to stay together and focus on synergetic leadership and empowering organizations (paradigm 11).

The biggest groups were those who had chosen to focus on gender sensitivity, equality and harmony (paradigm 8), associative economics, social capital and sustainable development (paradigm 10), and light-seeking and light-sharing education (paradigm 7). In contrast, no participant signed up to focus on civics and democratic governance (paradigm 5), culture and community creativity (paradigm 6), appropriate technology (paradigm 12), or mutual enrichment of families and friendships (paradigm 13). Some participants found themselves to be alone in choosing their respective paradigms and they were absorbed by the workshop group with a paradigm focus closest to theirs, or they joined the group with a paradigm focus of their second choice. One participant stuck it out with alone with her chosen paradigm, and two participants got themselves absorbed in other groups not knowing, until the reporting period that they had chosen the same paradigm.

Workshop group discussions were allotted an hour and a half, and most groups found this length of time comfortably adequate for familiarization and initial discussions on the paradigms, to have enough basis for endorsing these paradigm titles and bullet points adopted by the Conference as written, with some suggested additions and refinements from them.

AT THE resumption of the plenary session, Prof. Bernard Karganilla of UPM-MSP and Engr. Faustino Mendoza Jr. of PSTC-Baguio presided over the reporting of discussions and proposed resolutions hammered out by the workshop groups. One by one, the groups presented and moved for the body’s approval their resolutions based on the prepared draft resolution that carried this text:

“Whereas, the title and bullet points of empowering paradigm no. ___, titled, _____________________, has been initially discussed by a specific workshop group of individuals from ___ academic and ____ non-academic entities, and have been found by consensus to be generally sound, logical, unitive and empowering, subject to further development and refinement that may be done after this initial conference,

“BE IT RESOLVED, as it is hereby resolved by the First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms, in plenary session assembled, that this Conference mandates the Lambat-Liwanag Network to undertake a wider promotion and consultation process on the paradigm title and bullet points as presently worded;

“BE IT RESOLVED, FURTHER, that this Conference mandates that the Network Council hold more discussions on them and on proposed adjustments; and

“BE IT RESOLVED, FINALLY, that the paradigm-specific consultative conferences be held by the Network jointly with concerned academic and non-academic entities.”

At the bottom of the draft, for presentation to the plenary body but not as part of the proposed resolutions, are printed these words: “The Workshop Group submits the following points (suggested additions, deletions, rewordings) to the Network Council for immediate consideration in the further development and refinement of this paradigm:” Based on the workshop discussions, the rapporteurs of the groups wrote below these lines in their resolution sheets the ideas from their group members, mostly validated by the group members by consensus.

All these sheets were collected by the Conference Secretariat after the resolutions were presented and adopted. Here are the suggestions, per paradigm.

Paradigm 1-- Total Human Development Through Synergism: add the psychological aspect to the point on biological and clarify its relation to the latter; include the family under “social basics”; add technology as product of human creativity; humanize use of technology to free people from work to focus on total human development. (Group members: Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes, ASI; Henri Vasallo, ASI; Dr. Aurora P. Asanza, CCHDM; and Prof. Sofia E. Guillermo, PUP)

Paradigm 2-- Holistic Health: incorporate the study of indigenous healing in medical studies curriculum; support alternative schools focusing on community health development that render medical services and undertake social activities for the communities; develop encompassing programs for athletes, going beyond physical training to also cover sports psychology, medicine and wellness, and holistic health care; develop every individual’s ability for self-healing to avoid overdependence on medical professionals. (Group members: Virginia Nuestro, UPM-MSP; Dina Remulacio, UPM-MSP; Mellie Ducusin, CCHDM)

Paradigm 3-- Deep Ecology: add that ecology is biodiversity; define deep ecology as a life-centered system; assert that the center of all life forms is God; highlight eco-spirituality, especially action-oriented eco-spirituality, like in community-based projects and in documentation and promotion of successful ecological projects. (Group members:Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales, UST; Vic O. Milan, CLEAR; Luis Gorgonio, SanibLakas Foundation; Arlene Natocyad, ASI; Gina Arenas-Yap, ASI; Ray Hilot, FSGPF; Jesus M. de la Crin, FSGPF)

Paradigm 4-- Sense of History and Mission: use the “3-D view” of history as a remedy to the fragmented teaching of our nation’s story; build a liberating outlook on our citizens’ consolidated journey; build a holistic consciousness of our collective experience; and promote the discernment of our collective mission as a nation to contribute to the betterment of humankind. (Group members: Prof. Bernard Karganilla, UPM; Prof. Corazon P. Coloma, PUP; Leny C. Morada, CCHDM; Jeanette V. Loonzon, UST-SRC, Jose Eduardo Velasquez of Kamalaysayan and Museo ng Pasig)

Paradigm 7-- Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education: promote the roles of the stakeholders in decision-making; insure access to information with skills for critical thinking; work for the preservation of indigenous and national culture; democratize communications; highlight the holistic approach; and highlight the dignity of the individual beyond the human rights framework. (Group members: Prof. Enrique D. Torres, PUP; Prof. Raem Mendoza, Letran; S. M. Vallesteros, CCHDM; Sr. Marietta P. Demelino, PUP-IC; Judith Polo, Family Farm School; Guillermo Q. Roman Jr., PNU; and Romero Royo, PNU)

Paradigm 8-- Gender Sensitivity, Equality and Harmony: Banner theme-- “Gender Equality: Women and Men as Stakeholders and Beneficiaries of Development”; recognition of women’s contributions in both the private and the public spheres, and valuation of women’s labor in both productive and reproductive areas; assert women’s rights as human rights; seek promotion and institutionalization of genuine respect between the sexes; promote equality of opportunities; work to eliminate all physical, cultural and philosophical/religious justifications for discrimination against women; and seek the attainment of equality. (Group members: Dr. Noemi A. Medina, PNU; Prof. Flora Arellano, PUP; Daisy Mae Diaz, Linkstaff Services; Prof. Norma Tinambacan, Assumption College; Monina Geaga, Sarilaya; Emilie Tangonan, PCU; and Maria Gamoras, PCU)

Paradigm 9-- Reconstructive/Restorative Justice: need for further development of criminal law in the Philippines; need to study different philosophies underlying the criminal law system; seek out and promote restorative justice models; there is need to refine the fundamental principles of restorative justice. (Group member: Prof. Zenaida H. Brioso, PNU and DoJ)

Paradigm 10-- Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development: need for cultural development in terms of self-reliance, starting from family life, and supporting local suppliers of raw materials; need for mainstream education to highlight Filipino cultural values and cooperative values; temporarily enter global tieups but ownership and management should be in Filipino hands; government should formulate pro-people economic policies and programs in both industry and agriculture. Summary: Tangkilikin ang sariling atin at isaalang-alang ang quality production, hanapbuhay, tao, kalikasan, kapital, komunidad, at pamilihan, dahil ang lahat ng bagay ay magkakaugnay. (Group members: Prof. Ma. Socorro P. Calara, UST; Prof. George Llaguno, UPM; Zeni Mique, Sarilaya; Prof. Angelita Sumaway, PUP; Tony V. Cruzada, SanibLakas Foundation-CES; Ranulfo B. Bueno, Kaakbay Coop; Engr. Faustino Mendoza Jr., PSTC-Bgo; Diosdado Luna, Bayan News; and Pinky Serafica, SanibLakas Foundation-CES and Bayan News)

Paradigm 11-- Synergetic Leadership and Empowering Organizations: at the end of the title, add “and individuals”; broaden 4th bullet point, because the given types are not the only personality-centered organizational practices which should be repudiated, and there are other concerns in organizations which must be repudiated such as sexual harassment, discrimination of women in terms of rank and salary; and exploitation of women in the organization. (Group members: Ferdinand Limbo, Sarah Jane P. Lopez, Angelus Angeliza, Irish, Kay J. del Valle, and Nina P. Reyes)

Paradigm 14-- Human Dignity and Harmony: ‘Human Rights and Peace’: recognition of human rights as inherent, basic and universal; study the anatomy of human rights violations; study the basis for social harmony, synergy and peace; promote the human rights of women, children, indigenous groups, fisherfolk, farmers and laborers; and add to the second bullet point the context of community support in terms of exercise and enjoyment, and the dimensions and endeavors. (Group members: Antonio Villasor, PhilRights, Prof. Araceli Siva, PNU; and Paradigm 1 Group)

Paradigm 15-- Aesthetics Without Boundaries: ‘Art From the Heart’: need more discussion on all the bullet points; “aesthetics without boundaries” is the study of personal and cultural transformation through aesthetic education as manifested in daily life, and it is to live life to the fullest. “Isabuhay ang kaganapan bilang tao, ang buhay at ang paglikha. (Group members: Frederick Rey, ASI; Celia Gregorio, CCHDM; German Caniete, Salika; and Joydee C. Robledo, SanibLakas Foundation)

In the case of the paradigms that were not discussed by the workshop, it was decided that the Conference was not in a position to adopt any resolutions on them, and they remain mandated only by the Network Council.

After the consideration and adoption of the main resolution concerning the empowering paradigms, there were also special resolutions proposed by various groups and individuals and adopted by the body. These were:

Special Resolution No. 1: Conference condemns all acts of terrorism and violence from any which side of the ongoing conflicts, and calls on all advocates of peace, human rights and civilized society to desist from echoing justifications from the warhawks and from taking partisan sides.

Special Resolution No. 2: Conference criticizes the content and process of the ongoing curriculum reform under the Department of Education, and mandates the Lambat-Liwanag to demand democratic participation in the process, and to seek to involve itself in this process.

Special Resolution No. 3: Conference pays tribute to all teachers on the occasion of World Teachers’ Month.

Special Resolution No. 4: Conference calls for immediate halt to all forms of violence on, and oppression of, women, children, indigenous peoples, the elderly, and other vulnerable sectors of society.

PROF. Bernard Karganilla and Engr. Faustino G. Mendoza teamed up to give the working session synthesis which was a recap of the process and a summary of the contents of the resolutions, and the expression of gratitude to all the groups and all the group members for having significant output and successful initial familiarization with the empowering paradigms within a very limited time allotment.

Let's Welcome, Help Hasten

the Sunrise of Enlightenment

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Professor in Applied Cosmic Anthropology

Asian Social Institute

(representing Dr. Mina Ramirez)

I FIRST came across these words almost 40 years ago in the happy refrain of the song, Age of Aquarius, which described the period then of the mid-60s as a dawning, the dawning of a new age for Humankind. Now, almost four decades later, are we well into that age?

I stand before you once again, this time to represent Dr. Mina Ramirez, President of the Asian Social Institute where I have been teaching since last year, because she could not come to be with us here physically. ASI was founded a few years before the song Age of Aquarius became popular, and I am proud to say that through all the decades since that time, ASI has been resonating with this dawning, even contributing to the hastening of this dawning. The role assigned to ASI this afternoon is thus appropriate: to challenge us all to do the same in the coming years and decades.

It may be difficult for the youth of today to even imagine life at the time that song was popular— no computers, no Internet, no cellphones or texting, no faxes, and no cable TV. (And may we add— no need for bottled water, no flash floods, no red tide, no ozone hole, no…) Things have really changed. And all that change did not happen in just a few years. It’s part of the movement of history that is as slow as the creeping of the glaciers but also as powerful as glaciers that have redesigned entire mountain ranges. This is the very gradual dawning of the glorious sunshine for us to let in so it could chase away darkness and shorten all shadows in our lives.

There definitely has been this dawning of a new human consciousness that loves all life, prefers celebration to competition, chooses appreciation before intellectualization, consciously breathes in the divine spirit, earnestly stands for honesty, mutual respect and equality, democracy, pluralism, gender harmony, intergenerational responsibility, deep ecology, and the synergy that is dynamically based on healthy diversities among species, among races, and among cultural or belief-based groupings. Such synergy now confronts, for example, the “millennium monster” that is globalized greed. People all over have seen through the exploitative designs of the World Trade Organization (WTO), created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which was once quite prophetically described as “The Ten Commandments of the Golden Calf.”

All over the world, people coming from various races are getting spiritually magnetized by kindred frames of mind and action that empower and not shackle, frames of mind that unite people instead of turning them against one another, paradigms that would tear down walls and build bridges.

People have started, in the words of a poem-prayer, Earth Synergy, to “stand in reverence before the rest of the bio-diverse citizens and elements of our living planet Gaia, to take full responsibility for past and present environmental destruction, and to lovingly commit a conscious synergy of efforts to rescue and heal, conserve and exalt out Mother Earth.” The poem (now translated into a dozen or so languages) calls this “a giant leap for Humankind,” not towards the moon or anywhere else in the outer space, but “right back to the bosom of our home planet.” This would be a strong metaphor for every human to start “going home” to oneself, and rediscovering one’s real individual and our collective identity.

The development of consciousness of the human race has come a long way from the command regimentation that stressed faith and righteous behavior (Old Testament) while downplaying comprehension and free will . We have had more than two thousand years of enhanced free will and the admonition to love one another (message of Christ), where the beginnings of comprehension (physics and other natural sciences) completely sidelined spiritual faith as by then misrepresented by dogmas of divisive religions. Through this period, the use of free will was often leading to disastrous consequences of intolerance and bigotry, oppression and exploitation, greed and tyranny.

And we are now gradually moving into a new period where human consciousness would really blossom in unconditional love and unconditional peace. We will fully be enjoying free will but matured enough, after centuries of experiential education, to freely choose love and synergy over alienation, separation and antagonism. Faith will still be there but no longer blind. Individual human dignity will be there but no longer as separative ego. Comprehension will be there, well beyond present-day conventional physics, but intellectualization will be underpinned by love, honest humility and spiritual discernment. Righteousness will be there in each of us but based on maturity and no longer externally commanded.

The conscious synergy of Humankind and of all Creation will emerge, a real and embracive unity, no longer an artificial or exclusive one. That will be the real age of the full Pentecost, where a fast-increasing number of people, not just a dozen apostles, will now feel the tongues of fire lighting up their souls from within, souls that would reach out to embrace one another and draw in more and more people into their informal families.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us. And the world will live as one! But you cannot say that to me in all earnestness. That would be more appropriately addressed to Lennon of those days, not to me or to ASI or to groups like the SanibLakas Foundation or Lambat-Liwanag Network of today. We all have reason to declare having joined Lennon in his dream, and that more people are joining us, more and more people like us are joining up with all the rest. And we can all say, or rather sing with more feeling than we or our parents ever sang in the 60s—the Age of Aquarius has already dawned. The bright sunrise of enlightenment for real peace and love has come!

The empowering paradigms are seeds of light. They resonate with the innermost whispers of our spirit. They are seeds of light that we can gather to plant deep within our hearts and minds, in all our talk, in all our walk of all our talk, and plant in the heart-minds of many others. Are we all ready to pledge upon our honor to help gather, spread and cast far and wide these seeds of light? Are we all ready to make extra efforts to contribute to the hastening of this glorious sunrise in the history of Humankind?

Are we ready to make the commitment on that Panata in your kits that I had earlier asked you to read immediately? Are you? I’m almost sure I already know your answer, and so, slightly ahead of hearing your response to this challenge, let me just say this…

'Titipunin Namin, Ipalalaganap,

at Isasabuhay ang Liwanag!'

By the Conference Participants

Led by Prof. Reyes of ASI

KAMING narito ngayon / na pawang mga kalahok / ng First Lambat-Liwanag Conference on Empowering Paradigms / ay naninindigang harapin at tanggapin / ang hamong patuloy na pagyamanin, / malawakang ipalaganap at itaguyod, / hanggang sa malawakang maisabuhay / ang mga balangkas ng pag-iisip at pagkilos / na makapagbubuklod at makapagbibigay-lakas / sa Sambayanan / sa bawat Pilipino at sa bawat tao, / ngayong pumapasok na kami / sa isang bagong milenyo / na dapat sumaksi / sa ganap na pag-unlad at ganap na pagkakaisa ng mga tao. //

Gagawin namin ito / sa kaparaanan ng pagsasanib-lakas / namin at ng paparami pang aming hihimukin / na maging mga kapanalig / ng Lambat-Liwanag Network. //

Ito ay taimtim na panata naming lahat / na isasabuhay sa abot ng makakaya / sa ngalan ng aming karangalan / bilang mga taong matapat. //

Kasihan nawa kami / ng Bathalang Maykapal, / Mapagmahal na Pinagmulan, / at Dakilang Kabuuan ng lahat ng Pagsasanib / sa buong Sanlibutan. ///

BASED on the specific paradigms chosen by the participants during the registration, they were given handouts to go with their general kits. The paradigm-specific handouts were full reproductions of certain articles, excerpts of articles and materials existing before the formation of the Lambat-Liwanag Network, and some other materials, like the fully written-out draft Paradigm Declaration for Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education (Paradigm No. 7) and the detailed outline of point headings and content entries for Synergism in Total Human Development (Paradigm No.1), preparatory to writing the first draft of the Paradigm Declaration for this.

Other materials for specific paradigms were prepared for the Conference but copies made of them were insufficient in number due to some technical difficulties. All these materials, however, are carried in this section of the book. The Conference organizers tried to provide handouts from a variety of sources on each paradigm, and due to our limitations we are able to provide only a handful of documents that were well within our immediate reach, especially from writings of the lead convenor that were already in his computer hard drive and other materials in his personal library.

The inclusion of any which material here does not signify that we are endorsing its assertions. We are simply recommending that you read them to stimulate and/or enrich your thoughts on the paradigms. We would appreciate any comments, positive or negative, from you about these handouts, as well as recommended additions to them, for consideration by the forthcoming series of Lambat-Liwanag Paradigm-Specific Conferences.

Following, alphabetically by surname, are the authors of the materials here: Ruth Benedict; Teresita Camacho; Bill Cane; Maraya Chebat; Tony Cruzada; Dorothy Dobbins; Esperanza Dowling; Edcel Lagman; Nelson Mandela; Federico Mayor; Noemi Medina; Drunvalo Melchizedeck; Kenneth Murrell; Nicanor Perlas; Mina M. Ramirez; Betty Reardon; Ed Aurelio Reyes; Joydee Robledo; Serafin Talisayon; Alvin Toffler; Enrique Torres; Judith Vogt; Neale Donald Walsch; Ian Winter; Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II); and Marz Zafe; plus the following entities (also alphabetically): CBCP-NASSA; Earthlite Sparks & Reflections; Philippine Human Rights Information Center; Philippine Movement for Press Freedom; Salika; SanibLakas Foundation; and the United Nations General Assembly.

(For full texts of paradigm handouts as carried in the documentation book, please click here.)

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	Table of Contents	.


	Messages	.


	Chapter 1 Conference Background	.


	Chapter 2 Conference Opening	.

A Gathering of Light

for Empowerment

An Academe-based Network

Participatory Processes

The participatory nature of the processes is ensured both by the very mission of the convening body (promotion of synergism and building of actual synergies) and the multilateral character of the Network Council with each member-entity represented in the Council.

At present, this Network Council is composed of:

Light, after all, has the powerful natural tendency to spread.

Synergy-oriented individuals

Formalized synergy

Vision: Human Development and Harmony

Mission: Twin-Tasks for Synergism

Members teaming up among themselves

Members teaming up with kindred spirit

The Program Thrusts, Programs & Projects

It’s UST’s Honor to Host This Conference

Prof. Ernesto R. Gonzales

Director, Social Research Center, University of Tomas; and;

Secretary-General, Lambat-Liwanag Network

A Synergy of Light for the People’s Empowerment

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

President, SanibLakas Foundation,

and Convenor, Lambat-Liwanag Network

.

Let Us All Be Gatherers and Sharers of Light!

Dr. Noemi Alindogan-Medina

Council Chair, Lambat-Liwanag Network

and Chair, Social Sciences Dept., Philippine Normal University

.

A Firm Agreement to Build Lambat-Liwanag

By the Lambat-Liwanag Network Council Members

The ‘Expanding We’: Facing a Mountain of Tasks

Prof. Enrique D. Torres

Council Vice Chairperson, Lambat-Liwanag Network

and Chief, Human Rights Office, Polytechnic University of the Philippines

I. General Tasks:

A. Collation and Generation of Literature

B. Paradigms Development

C. Paradigms Promotion

II. Specific Tasks:

A. Collation of Existing Literature on the Paradigms and their Divisive and Disempowering Counterparts

B. Generation of New Literature for the Empowering Paradigms

C. Development of Mechanisms for the Sharing of All Holdings

D. Effective Public Promotion of the Empowering Paradigms

Simultaneous Paradigm Workshops

Prof. Bernard Karganilla

Member, Lambat-Liwanag Network Council

and Convenor, Manila Studies Program, University of the Phils. Manila

The Workshop Discussions

Let's Welcome, Help Hasten

the Sunrise of Enlightenment

Prof. Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Professor in Applied Cosmic Anthropology

Asian Social Institute

(representing Dr. Mina Ramirez)

'Titipunin Namin, Ipalalaganap,

at Isasabuhay ang Liwanag!'

By the Conference Participants

Led by Prof. Reyes of ASI