Development Entrepreneurs

R ecently I had the privilege of watching a Provincial Development Council in session. I wanted to be there because I wanted to see how two resolutions important to a project we were working on would be passed. I had made a mental list of possible problems that could crop up, delay or otherwise block the adoption of the measures we wanted. Before we got to this point our project team had to overcome several hurdles. First of all they had to complete their work, which was all about identification of roads used by different sectors in their respective value chains. They had to hold Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews to be able to do this. They also had to put together a GIS layer of all roads in the Province, from the big national highways to the smallest barangay roads.  Then they had to convince their own Board about the soundness of their process as well as the correctness of their choices (specific road segments that they believe should be prioritized f...

Because development interventions usually start out as theories these are often implemented on a small, experimental scale - a pilot. As soon as efforts start to show desired results, Development Entrepreneurs start looking for ways to scale up the reform (some leading-edge DEs like Jaime Faustino say reforms, from the beginning, should be scalable). Scaling up means implementing the reforms on a wider scale. In the context of the Philippines, this usually means replicating the pilot nationwide - and often, because pilot projects are necessarily time-bounded, without the continuing intervention and support of a funded proponent. In simpler terms, once you’ve tested and proven that a development reform works in one place, how do you make it happen everywhere else - without being involved in the process anymore?  How do you influence events over space (the rest of the country) and time (after your project funds have run out) so that the reform you’ve introduced spreads? ...

For almost a year now we have been working on enhancing access to credit by land owners. The first question we asked ourselves, land owners, and banks was, “what systemic factors (policies, procedures, etc) prevents land owners from accessing credit?” Answer Number One: most land owners do not have titles to their lands. Many occupants of land have all the prerequisites to legally claim ownership - to get Titles to their land - but have not been able to do so. Many lot owners, local government officials, people’s organizations still do not know about new laws (e.g. RA 10023) and procedures (systematic adjudication, public land titling partnerships between DENR and LGUs) and have not taken advantage of faster, cheaper ways to get titles. Some LGUs that have been introduced to systematic adjudication in the context of LGU-DENR partnership have not continued with their efforts, for a variety of reasons. And even those that have sustained their efforts are now facing a new challenge: dela...