Sorsogon

The Philippine Center for Civic Education and Democracy (PCCED) has been operating in Sorsogon Province as early as 2010. Project Citizen was implemented in the towns of Matnog, Irosin, Bulan, Casiguran and Gubat including Sorsogon City. Project Citizen (PC) is an approach for education in democracy involving the training of students in seeking public policy interventions to solve community problems.

At present, there are two priority programs being implemented in the Sorsogon: Participatory Budgeting and Barangay Rule of Law. Participatory Budgeting is a program which allows ordinary citizens to participate in making decisions on the priorities and spending for their local budget. The Barangay Rule of Law Seminar trains barangay officials, specifically Lupong Tagapamayapa (village peace councils) members on transparency, accountability, participatory leadership, and the processes of the barangay justice system.

The town of Gubat was the first to implement BRLS and PB through “Promoting Democratic Values in the Barangays of Gubat” project. 42 barangays participated during the two-year project. Through BRLS, the Municipal-Wide Network of Lupons in the province was created. The network allowed for barangay lupons to air out concerns and share best practices with each other.

Ordinary citizens fr Gubat, Sorsogon debate/discuss how public budget would be spent. They will draft proj proposals pic.twitter.com/oeBcyuBw5Z

— PH Civic Education (@pcced) September 1, 2013

300 citizens representing various sectors of Gubat, Sorsogon join the #participatorybudgeting General Assembly. pic.twitter.com/O6T14lurj0

— PH Civic Education (@pcced) September 1, 2013

The PCCED started implementing projects in the town of Pilar in 2013 through “Active Defense of Human Rights in the Barangays of Pilar”. It was a two-year project focused on capacity building for Barangay Officials, Barangay Lupon (village peace council), and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) through BRLS and PB. There were 49 Barangays benefited from the project.

Seven project proposals were prepared by #civilsociety organizations from Pilar #sorsogon and were presented during the #ParticipatoryBudgeting Showcase on Aug 13, 2015. Representatives from the sectors of women, farmers, fisherfolks, youth, PWDs, transport underwent capacity building seminars on organizational #development, project proposal writing, and civics. The LGU has set aside a portion of its development fund for #PB. #nonprofit #NGO #CSO #development #democracy #citizenparticipation #goodgovernance

A photo posted by PCCED (@pcced) on Aug 14, 2015 at 4:28am PDT

The Sangguniang Bayan of Pilar passed a resolution adapting the BRLS in order to ensure the sustainability of the program. At present, the LGU-Pilar allotted with P1-M for the implementation of the project proposals.

On February 2015, another project, “Promoting Democratic Values in the Barangays of Barcelona” was started in the town of Barcelona. The two-year project focuses on capacity building for Barangay Officials and Civil Society Groups through BRLS, CSO and Barangay Officials Capacity Training and Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) Training.

In 2016, the PCCED will develop the State of Local Democracy (SoLD) program in Barcelona. The program enables the citizens to periodically monitor the health of their local democracy through the conduct of self-evaluations of democratic life in their locality, identify democratic strengths and weaknesses and translate these into local reform and development priorities.

Another project “Promoting Democratic Values in the Barangays of Juban” is set to be launched on February. The two-year project will focus on BRLS, DRRM Training and SOLD. For all the PCCED projects in the province, Zabalketa and Agencia Esañola de Cooperacion Internacional para el Desarollo (AECID) havee been its long time partners.