[This article, originally titled "Urgent Need:  Poverty Alleviation Through the Conscious and Effective Application of the Synergism Principle by the Cooperatives," was written  on March 3, 2000. Part of this was subsequently carried in the book Empowering Partnerships for the People: The PDAP Experience, which was finalized by the same author later that same month and released on April 6.]
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POVERTY alleviation and eventual eradication has long been the concern of Filipinos across generations.  It has been a consistent fixture, in one form of expression or another, in campaign platforms and actual programs of gov-ernance of a long successions of administrations of this Republic, with the incumbent administration of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada having made it the centerpiece of all its efforts.  In fact, there now exists an active body, no less than a full commission, namely the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC), precisely  to address this priority agenda in an integrated and comprehensive manner.

....................However, despite all the efforts, the problem of mass poverty seems to elude alleviation, more so eradication.  Availability of material resources, largely sought as in-vestment and loans from abroad, and availability of structures for empowerment that have been extant especially since the 1986 People Power Revolution, have not suf-ficed to give the incumbent adminis-tration's declared arch-nemesis -- poverty -- the decisive blow that it deserves. An important component has been sorely lacking or  altogether missing in the strategy. This is the culture of empowerment and mass uplift-ment through the full understanding and popular application of the principle of synergism, the principle of magnification of the combined capability of people who work closely in healthy teamwork.
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Bayanihan: A Legacy Being Wasted

....................This principle once lived vibrantly in our people's philosophy and behavior for centuries, even millennia. Our ancestors called it "bayanihan," which eventually yielded our word for heroes and heroism. Unfortunately, this important cultural resource of our nation has faded away especially in the past few centuries since we came under foreign subjugation.  Western-style individualism has made our people divide and quarrel in the face of crisis, instead of rallying and working together to face it.  Alas, we have relegated the bayanihan spirit to occasional portrayals of men carrying a nipa hut together, without the necessary profound comprehension and reverence, much less application, that the principle deserves.

....................If we may add another historical note, the very birth of our nation towards the end of the 18th century was made possible through a four-year gathering process by a unity-orient-ed organization that has since been remembered only for its bravery: the Katipunan. Few Filipinos know that the 1896 Revolution was the first-ever unified enterprise of the diverse communities in the Philippine archipelago and that the outbreak of fighting had to be preceeded with a long period of painstaking socio-cultural research, house-to-house education and organizing work focused on the internalization of the unifying ethical, even spiritual, tenets of the Katipunan as spelled out in its "Kartilya." For many Filipinos, both the Katipunan and the Revolution was a matter of battles won and battles lost. We can't blame them. History books and commemorations have emphasized battles and military figures over nation-building and statesmen.  Actually, bayanihan was the moving spirit of the Katipunan!
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Cooperatives: Potent Mechanism for Empowerment

....................The principle of synergism should be most ideally embodied in cooperativism.  However, our country's cooperatives have been haunted by periods of miseducation and misdirection. Past administrations encouraged many cooperatives to be built, not really to synergize substantial material and human resources of its members as cooperatives should, but to act as conduits of external financial resources. Playing as fund conduits, these cooperatives had encouraged among its members a strong sense of dependence on external sources and rendered many cooperatives to exist -- and eventually die -- as milking cows of their officers and privileged members. This has run in the exact opposite of the supposed nature of cooperatives as defined by the International Cooperative Alliance.

....................Still, the existence of tens of thousands of cooperatives nationwide, and of their confederations and apex organizations, holds the great potential in real people participation in a successful poverty-alleviation program. The Filipino-Canadian consortium called Philippine Development Assistance Program  (PDAP), has, for example, given the cooperative movement a shining example to emulate, and former Bulacan Gov. Roberto Pagdanganan has published a call for a 'Cooperative Revolution' with accounts of more such examples from the Bulacan experience and from other countries.

....................Sec. Donna Gasgonia, NAPC Vice Chair for the Government Sector, acknowledged this potential categorically in her talk before the National Conference on Local Governance and Cooperative Dev-elopment as the Subic Freeport last November. The same conference was also addressed by "Obet" Pagdanganan who, on the same occasion, launched his very enlightening book, titled, A Call for Cooperative Revolution.

....................All these existing cooperatives have had their own respective cooperative education programs. But existing cooperative education programs have not included a component focused specifically on deeply imbibing the essence, spirit and practical efficacy of the principle and technology of synergism to make the necessary impact on the quality of recruitment, orientation and consolidation of cooperative mem-berships or on quality evaluation systems on the dynamism of cooperative life.

....................Some leaders in cooperative development have claimed that only the term "synergism" itself has been missing and that any term, after all, can not be all that necessary. Even just on the level of semantics, however, such a response begs the question and betrays a lack of receptiveness, for we seek a conscious application of the principle of synergism because there is a value to be had from that precise term.

....................Moreover, the actual practice of the cooperatives under their effective influence belies such dismissive response; a mind set of long-term depend-ence on external resources remains, and it runs contrary to the basically synergetic essence of cooperatives.

....................We seek to see such a widespread conscious application of the synergism principle within and among Philippine cooperatives for two basic and consequential reasons:
One, it is the only way to strengthen internally the cooperatives for them to make possible the "Cooperative Revolution" being envisioned by former Bulacan Gov. Roberto Pagdanganan and the poverty-eradication being envisioned by all administrations notably the incumbent Estrada administration, and for them to help build, and really benefit from, a healthy partnership with local government units (LGUs), as envisioned by a current joint project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) and the Philippine Cooperative Center (PCC).

....................Two, it is the only the way the cooperative sector could effectively teach by example the rest of Philippine society in a more comprehensive recovery of the essential heritage of "bayanihan" and in the needed effective application of the principle of synergism in surmounting the challenges being confronted in our march as a nation well into the new millennium. Thus the cooperative sector will be the Katipunan's present-day successor in reviving the bayanihan spirit for the whole nation to attain unity and prosperity!

....................These two general points were first delivered in well-received talk by SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation Board Secretary Joydee C. Robledo before the general assembly of the Visayas Cooperative Center (VICTO) held in Bohol in April 1998. SanibLakas has learned much more about cooperativism since that time and her talk, in our view, has consistently been revalidated.  Ms. Robledo herself has since become very actively-involved in the implementation of the UNDP-CDA-PCC joint project mentioned above.
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Proposal: Synergism Education for Cooperatives
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....................It may, therefore, be a wise move and investment on the part of President Estrada's administration for the NAPC to commission the preparation and subsequent application of a  program of effective synergism education for the cooperative movement, to consist of national surveys and consultations, preparation of education modules including the holding of seminars and the publication of booklets and guides, and periodic assess-ments of impact, all to be done by an appropriate person, group of persons, or organization, under supervision by NAPC and in coordination with the Cooperative Development Authority.

....................It may be wise also for many, if not all, agencies and institutions involved in cooperative development, including the academe,  to effectively support such a move.
The first phase of this program would logically be a feasibility study phase where all qualitative perceptions and factors shall be validated and given quantitative approximations.
SanibLakas Foundation, a synergism-oriented non-profit organization founded in 1996, seeks to play a significant role in this entire process. Aside from its internal capabilities and resources, it has standing healthy linkages with the Philippine Cooperative Center and its member-federations, with CDA, with UNDP and with the academe.

....................Effective application by cooperatives of the principle of synergism will directly and substantially contribute to the success of thrusts against poverty, with the self-capitalized cooperative sector growing both in size and scope of enterprises. This whole development will and also yield a rich trove of practical lessons for emulation by the rest of the Filipino people, thus rightfully restoring in our culture the rich legacy of the bayanihan spirit.