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SANIB-SINAG
3 April 30, 1998
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"Earth Day ’98: InfoShare for Synergism had three transmissions, namely the invitation mini-poster (see page of this folio of Sanib-Sinag), and two info bulletins that were sent out by fax and by e-mail. The fourth transmission will mostly carry this initial assessment. With this project already accomplished with moderate success last week, our Foundation is trying to get all the learnings and consolidate whatever network links have been opened, in order to move to planning for succeeding bigger "InfoShare for Synergism" occasion-based projects. The general idea is to build up to the institutionalization of information-sharing on a broader range of occasion-based and longer-term activities, services and projects of NGOs and POs, where the commercial mass media would be a major outlet of the data collated and processed.
Why we started with Earth Day?
We chose Earth Day because we felt everyone and every organization had reason to do something or other to commemorate it. Each PO or NGO has the duty to contribute to pro-environment efforts. All our social advocacies and sectoral demands are pointless if Earth could no longer sustain Life, our "Prime Advocacy." We had our basis to call upon everyone to: (1) plan and do something for Earth Day, and (2) tell others what the plans are. It is in the second number where Saniblakas Foundation offered its participation in setting up an information coordinating center. This pair of calls came out in the form of a Saniblakas Promotions mini-poster faxed to various NGO/PO destinations more than a full month before Earth Day itself.
At the time we made these calls, we were counting on the support of a youth organization and two youth volunteers, who later either backed out or never acknowledged their supposed intent to join us in the project. Fortunately, Obet Verzola of the Philippine Greens, Greg Bituin of Green Links and the Philippine Movement for Press Freedom, Vic Milan of "Kalikasan Vigilante" and CLEAR, and Alet of the Foundation for the Philippine Environment (FPE) came to the rescue as info collation and info dissemination channels.
Inspiration for this specific decision on Earth Day came from the difficult but very successful work done in the run-up to Earth Day two years ago by Ms. Buenafe U. Solomon of the FPE. Buena, moving on the basis of personal initiative, collated information on the plans of the various organizations, for dissemination to all environmentally-oriented organizations and institutions.
She got FPE itself to officially adopt this work and to find some of the plans that got firmed up as multilateral plans, thanks to the multilateral information-sharing and coordination such info-sharing caused.
Initial Learnings
We had moderate expectations in this experimental project, and we can claim moderate success. One part of success has been the initial projection of "InfoShare" as a positively-oriented and helpful sort of multilateral activity, and the projection, as well, of Saniblakas Foundation as a synergism-oriented institution providing such service as this, consistent to its name and orientation. The other part of the moderate success is the harvest of learnings that would prepare us to do better and more successfully next time.
First lesson is the need to get firm commitment among core participants, and not rely on mere oral promises indirectly made by third parties. Such promises, well intended and made in earnest, will always be welcome, but follow up work should have been done to directly firm up the commitments and specify the taskings with those who were actually going to do the work.
Second, there is need for more rigor in the gathering of information. An item in our information list that came out in both our alert bulletins that lacked the basic information of identity of the main organizing entity. With or without the "InfoShare" bulletins, however, there was sure to be some amount of misunderstanding because the person hired by the main organizer of the event did not mention the latter when he was seeking help from artist friends. They thought they were helping him, and did not know there was a big organization that they were all supposed to be working for.
Third, more preparatory transmissions should have been made in order to have more success in the collation of information. We were unable to get info on a major activity for Earth Day. It mattered little to us that the organization mounting it has been some kind of outcast in the environmental movement; had we found out about their activity, we would have listed it in the lineup.
Fourth, there is need to sharpen the synergic orientation of the "InfoShare for Synergism" project in relation to judgments that may be harbored and/or expressed by the NGOs and POs about one another’s project or about one another.
Promotion of Pluralist Multilateralism
We still need to cultivate the spirit of diverse and autonomous activities all united under one theme, with big enough a reason to unite if only for such an occasion as Earth Day and deemphasize their negative impressions and judgments of one enother. This is the harder part of the work pertaining to this and other projects of Saniblakas Foundation that promote pluralist multilateralism.
We still need to sharpen our "ground rules" in order to gradually build up this collective attitude. Otherwise, our Foundation might get caught in the crossfire of hopelessly competing and bickering organizations and institutions that would seek to put down one another and belie one another’s information that we all include in our bulletins.But we have started. And we’re on our way.
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