Reaching out is good

As in other underdeveloped countries, the better features of Philippine society have a tendency to cluster in the national capital or metropolitan region. While those in the nation’s metropolis often complain about the quality of their institutions and the locally available services, Filipinos elsewhere often envy them their relatively better situation. Whether one refers to the police, the public utility companies, the educational facilities or the general infrastructure of roads, bridges, sewerage and drainage systems, those living beyond the National Capital Region generally think of having NCR facilities as an upgrade relative to their own.

Appreciating the situation, many conscientious Metro Manilans and their institutions have outreach programs which share some of their endowments with people in the country’s less fortunate areas. Those who serve the programs – concerned citizens who deliberately reach out to help – and the people who are served develop a sense of fellowship that is crucial in building a stronger, definitely democratic republic. At their best, outreach programs generate a sense of personalsatisfaction among all those who participate in the activity. It may also be noted that such programs – at their best – prevent any cruel notion of charity from developing.

An institution that has pursued a consistent outreach program is the Philippine Political Science Association (PPSA), the national association of professional political scientists and others who do either research or teaching in the discipline. Year in and year out, the PPSA which is based in Metro Manila conducts seminars and conferences for political science teachers and researchers in various parts of the country. The latter are often badly handicapped by their inability to keep up with current developments in political science and suffer much in terms of lacking access to decent libraries in their areas of work. More crucially perhaps, these teachers and researchers also suffer from lack of academic interaction with their professional colleagues elsewhere. Incredibly underpaid, grossly overworked and mortally deprived of professional contact, such people have a natural tendency to be demoralized and eventually professionally wither away. The ultimate casualties of course are the young people they instruct or the local communities for which they may be conducting research.

The PPSA has sustained outreach activities for these needy academics. Currently, it is running a vital outreach program in Cebu City where close to seventy academics from many parts of the country – from the Ilocos to Bicol, the Visayas and the ARMM – are gathered to explore the urgent political concerns of our citizenry. At the local (even baranganic), national, regional and global levels, senior Filipino scholars and enough of their junior colleagues share their professional knowledge and experience on matters that relate to effective, participative and democratic governance. At all levels of analysis, these scholars attempt to define ways and means of more effectively conducting intelligent and requisite research. A basic concern is predictably the improvement of teaching pedagogies so teachers and researchers in political science may better serve their deserving but oft-handicapped clientele, their young students in many of the more remote areas of the country.

Close to the end of the PPSA’s two-day outreach program, one senses that the participants have professionally and personally bonded extremely well. Fortified by hard, conscientious, collaborative work – often indicated by extended sessions, several postponed meals and much appreciated humor – everyone appears ready, perhaps even eager to return home, to test for local application what has been collegially explored in this outreached experience and to share the good feeling that productive collaboration among interested academic brings.

The PPSA has been very fortunate in having this particular outreach effort endorsed by the Commission on Higher Education and the Philippine Social Science Council. Crucial to its success is the generous support extended by the University of the Philippines, the National College of Public Administration and Governance, the Asia Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the United Nations Development Program as well as the individual colleges and universities that sponsored their teachers and researchers to attend this PPSA program.

Of course, the PPSA and all the academic participants in this outreach program deserve much commendation.

All of these agencies and people are living proof of a singular truth, one that Filipinos might try universalizing as much as possible, as fast as they can. It is indubitably true that reaching out in common and productive fellowship is good. It must be so since reaching out makes everyone feel so terribly good.