3rd of 4rth: Sabakan Inc: Revisiting vision, mission and goals

Sabakan Inc. revisited their organizational vision and deeply reconsider if there is a need to reformulate it? Why and how gender fair is articulated with preferential option for the poor, oppressed and marginalized?

Participants pointed out that women’s have different realities

· Our articulation and understanding of women’s reality have implication to our intervention.

· Initially, women’s reality is grounded on oppression, exploitation and violence

· While the former is the dominant reality, there is also a need to surface the realities of women addressing violence on their own and the many changes for the better occurring in the society that addresses gender issues, violence against women included.

· The Process that can be used to draw all these inspirations is Appreciative Inquiry.

· There is a need to address the experiences of abuses but there is also a need to surface changes because this will either gave us hope, inspiration, affirm that women intervention has impact, affirm that women are not passive victims, show that there are opportunities for working with others

Other important realizations:

• We do not own their pains. This will make the intervention more difficult because we will be addressing the pains of others and the pains you harbored from others.
• There is a need to cleanse our views and be optimistic with the changes and opportunities.
• Self-care with women who are caring for women.
• There is a need for feminist self-care.

DEFINING STRATEGIES

Facilitator’s concerns

1. must the vision and mission be reformulated?
2. revisit program?
3. SWOT analysis
4. formulating strategies

Strategy is a broad program for defining and achieving an organization’s objectives and implementing its mission and the organization’s response to its environment over time.

Strategic planning is the active formulation of strategy; it’s devising alternative choices of our objectives, of relating these choices to resources and the environment, and then selecting the best method of achieving those objectives.

The identified processes of the 3-day planning are gauge on the following:

1. start with external and internal assessment of organization
2. state changes desired in vision
3. state organization’s mission in achieving the vision
4. cluster assessment into SWOT items
5. do the SWOT analysis to identify strategies
6. from the strategies identify programs and projects
7. identify the implementing mechanism

WORKSHOP 3: “WELL DONE AND TO ENHANCE”

Participants were divided into groups and they were asked to answer the following questions as a person, as a staff of Sabakan and based on the impact assessments done of the organization.

Q1: what have we been doing well and why?

What do we need to enhance and why?

After the workshop, they gathered together for a sharing:

1. they passed through reflective level.
2. their findings are reflective of reality

(Note: I truncated their reflection because these are internal to them-Violy)

Some vital points raised:

1. There is imbalance of relationship of government agencies and Sabakan. DSWD is enjoying our services but we aren’t enjoying the services of the government.
2. There is a need for proper networking especially for gender advocacy.
3. Paralegal trainings would not be limited to staff but there ought to be an awareness program that will educate also the government workers on gender sensitivity. This will also include advocacy for the appropriate maximization of gender and development budget (GAD).
4. The reality now is that the government workers refer to Sabakan all cases involving women and children. Supposedly, it is the primary role of DSWD to secure and provide psychosocial therapy for victims of domestic violence. Government social workers are not capacitated for emotional recovery of victims or for healing.
5. Ask the local government to allocate their funds for psychosocial and emotional recovery to Sabakan that provides counseling to victims. It appears that the local government is dependent to Sabakan.
6. Fr. Shared the hindrances in accessing government-based resources. sabakan must make an awareness program such as gender sensitivity training and ask the local government to adopt this program and allocate budget thereto.
7. integration of Sabakan’s program to FLA, BEC, and church-based structures that could help promote, uphold and network the organizations programs and plans
8. Recall the pertinent suggested strategies from RCED

ü Sabakan should review the purpose of CAT/CAP and in consultation with specific segments of the target audience, reformulate them in terms of specific desired results.

ü Sabakan must have information materials regarding itself, its ministry, and its accomplishments and disseminate these through the various means available.

ü More efforts should be expended by the advocates in influencing the FLA (family Life Apostolate) and the BEC (Basic Ecclesial Community)

ü Build strong relationship with the Bishop and the priests as well as other religious leaders.

ü The entire board of trustees and project management team should be tapped to engage in a high-level advocacy to promote Sabakan and it’s ministry, cultivate relations with partners and donors, and win the support of the parish priests and diocesan apostolates.

ü Sabakan should consider appointing an advocacy officer from the present staff.

ü Sabakan should advocate the mainstreaming of cAT/CAP at an institutional policy level firstly, with diocesan school system and with the public school system, as well as in church-based ministries.

ü Mainstream in the diocese.

ü Develop a module on gender and development, stressing the partnership and equity between men and women, and give this ahead of and separately from discussions about violence against women where indeed men are frequently viewed as abusers.

ü Link with alternative law groups.

9. there is a need to develop new modules for GST for varied clienteles or sectors.
10. the proposed alternative awareness-building targets:

In sabakans, case, the target audience can be segmented further, to wit: rape victims, victims of other forms of sexual abuse, victims of domestic violence not involving sexual abuse

1. women victims
2. child victims
3. the immediate family of victims
4. perpetrators of violence against women and children
5. women at risk
6. children at risk
7. authority figures, specially those who stand in for parents, such as grandparents, teachers, school officials, godparents, priests and lay leaders etc.
8. law enforcers (barangay chief, barangay watch, barangay council for the protection of women and children, barangay peace and order committee, police, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, and jail personnel
9. relief agencies (department of social welfare and development and agencies or organizations implementing projects/programs for women and/or children)
10. other diocesan ministries and apostolates
11. parish organizations

after the deliberations, the facilitators presented the organization’s vision

VISION

We in Sabakan, envision women, empowered, healed and enjoying th fullness of their personhood participating in a just, peaceful and gender-fair society.

The questions posed were, must this be revised? Are all just society gender fair? Can the church relate to this? What about children? The vision is focused on the reality of women.

A staff asserted that “parenting is left most of the time to women. For every woman, there are number of child she is responsible for parenting.”

Fr. Rey on the other hand countered that in “this present situation, there are also husbands who are performing parenting obligations and wives are working.

They too recognize that oppressed men are also experiencing domestic violence though this is relatively done.”

The exchange of ideas made them agree that both men and women must “reflect the dignity of all to make them gender sensitive.”

The facilitator also presented the mission of Sabakan

MISSION

In view of this, we commit ourselves to accompany women, particularly those in the margin, in peace-building and healing

Fr. Rey said that “men are partners of women but oftentimes, though man are victims they are also oppressors. They victimized their own children too. The women are the focused of this vision but this should relate to the men. Men are hayahay nga victim. There is no genuine healing if men couldn’t become partners of women.”

The facilitator asked them “must there’ll be a resolution for now?”

They realized that they needed to sustain dialogue with partners that will also include the exploration of the roles of men and dignity of men in protecting women.

To relate all of these, they also revisited the Guiding Principles to relate all of these.

After some thoughts, participants had a resolution to “retain the Vision, mission and goals (VMG) as it is but we should also learn to capacitate ourselves to a continuing dialogue from outside of Sabakan for further revising in the future.”

Sr. Vilar shared that in other countries there is a Center for Man that addresses their need for counseling to stop smoking, drinking, illegal drugs engagements. They made a call for men to help other men.

Participants pointed that in many occasions and meetings, wives wanted that their husbands will be also invited to seminars on GST. The staff needed more trainings too. Only, Sabakan must devise a creative way of presenting the advocacy against VAWC to men or males.

They also pointed that it is also beneficial to organize men to become advocates against violence against women and to come up with stories of men who are supportive and stories of abused men. Maybe, Sabakan can promote that a man is more that a man if they’d care for peaceful relationship rather than abuses. It must be advance that MAN AS A human being, has dignity, capable of caring and of giving dignity to women. This can be done by truly communicating our purpose.

Sourcing from the concluding statement of impact assessment, it was emphasized that “on the whole, for an innovative ministry with no other Philippine program to emulate and for such a small organization, Sabakan has managed to have a positive impact beyond expectations on the lives of specific women and children, on their families and on their communities.

The facilitator stated that “with this conclusion of the RCED, we can hold on to this as we continue to serve.”

The session ended at 6:00 p.m. They had a reflection on what they felt and what they learned today.

They had dinner afterwards.

At 7 p.m., they watched Perfect Stranger, a movie that relates on domestic violence.