Basilan Gov Jim Hataman inspires WBA personnel to continue trekking the path of sustainable development

Participants having a photo op with Basilan Gov Jim Hataman 
on the sideline od the Day 2 workshop.

Isabela City, Basilan (November 17, 2021) - Basilan Provincial Governor Jim Hataman, a champion of alliance-building, visits the WBA workshop on Operations Manual today and inspires key personnel to continue trekking the path of sustainable, meaningful development. He reminds everyone that other forms of development are now possible in Basilan because of the security improvement. He reckons that the security improvement was possible because of the ownership and participation of all to make Basilan peaceful. 

He also explains why good governance and cultural reforms are integral to each other. He observes that unproductive age-old practices continue to define daily lives and how this should be changed in order to make life meaningful. For Basilan, the connection between people and the land should be symbiotic, i.e. land is what can improve people's lives, but as people's lives improved, the land should be nurtured not destroyed.

Behind this improved security background, other forms of development are now possible including this alliance building and efforts towards sustainable livelihood.

WBA enhances its draft Operations Manual

 

'Recall Circle' on day 2 of the workshop with participants recalling and

 sharing what each of them remembers from yesterday's session.

Isabela City, Basilan (November 16, 2021) – Local planning, agriculture, and finance personnel from the Western Basilan Alliance (WBA) convenes today for a week-long workshop to enhance their draft operations manual. The workshop will run for up to Friday, November 19, at the Kasinnahan Hotel and Resort, this city.

In his opening statement, Mr. Zia Ulhaq Basa, the WBA Alliance Management Office (AMO) manager welcomes the participants to this activity and hopes that they will exert their best efforts to share their ideas and experiences in enhancing the first draft which they started developing in May 2021.

Mayor Hanie A Bud of Maluso, the interim chair of the WBA, claims that this alliance is arguably the most functional in the BARMM region. He reminds everyone that the current coastal resources management (CRM) is just one of the many development focuses of the alliance. He enlightens the participants about the other development focus, such as good governance, peace and security, critical social services, and eco- and culture-based tourism.

The training team comes from the Ateneo Center for Leadership and Governance (ACLG) of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University (AdZU) and composed of team leader May Bulanon, lead trainer Ari Ismael and documenter-writer Cha Ibanez. Aside from facilitating this week's workshop, the training team will also come up with version 2 of the operations manual, incorporating salient points of the WBA Memorandum of Agreement (MoA), critical ingredients in the alliance-building manual, organizational development theory, and from the unique Basilan context.

The ACLG team engages the participants through a generative lecture-workshop methodology. Each session starts with a short overview of critical ingredients in the alliance-building manual. Small group workshop follows building on the participants' experiences and aspirations. Thereafter, every group presents their output and listens to comments from other groups, and is given another round to refine their output.

Western Basilan Alliance is the first inter-LGU cooperation in the province and is being capacitated by the Spanish aid agency AECID-funded MILAB 2 Project, implemented by the Institute for Autonomy and Governance (IAG) in partnership with the provincial and selected municipal governments.