TALUSAN, ZAMBOANGA SIBUGAY โ Out of a rural barangay of this sleepy Zamboanga Sibugay coastal town, Barangay Baganipay residents just finished celebrating the completion of a new classroom. Unlike most of the classrooms government has pledged in the national budget and are still to arrive, this one is Villa Verde-ready โ with a comfort room and a wash area and all the works.
The cost? Just โฑ1.4 million
This is much less than the estimates that became public in recent Senate hearings, where the cost per classroom was pegged from โฑ2.5 million to โฑ3 million each. Throughout the country, more than 168,000 classrooms are left unfunded or unfinished.
Baganipay classroom was built through the Department of Social Welfare and Developmentโs (DSWD) Kalahi-CIDSS (Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan โ Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services) program. It goes against the conventional thought that classrooms are to be expensive, delayed, and confined to national contractors alone.
A community-driven approach
The approach is the Community-Driven Development (CDD) model.
In Kalahi-CIDSS programs, no longer are the residents just passive beneficiaries. Rather, they plan, purchase, and even manage construction themselves. This way, cost is saved, bureaucracy is eliminated, and local communities become active stakeholders of their own development.
โHere, the community takes the lead. Theyโre not just watching from the sidelines โ they own the project,โ shared a local project volunteer.
The outcome extends beyond infrastructure. As responsibility and money are put in the hands of the people, the system creates accountability and trust, with little space for overcharging or ghost projects that for a long time have haunted top-down government projects.
The bigger picture
This is a timely achievement. School administrators acknowledge a shortage of classrooms is still an emergency, and it is compounded by rising enrollments and COVID-created backlogs.
Even though billions of pesos are spent each year, infrastructure projects of the Department of Education are delayed and overbudget. It takes rural schools a long timeโup to yearsโbefore a new classroom may become a reality.
The Baganipay classroom shows that societies are capable of faster, cheaper, and more transparently — when endowed with appropriate technologies and empowerment.
Scaling the model up
This leads to a larger question: If DSWD could do so through Kalahi-CIDSS, then why could not other agencies do the same?
Experts think that the model can be replicated for other infrastructure requirements โ from health facilities and water to roads. It’s a straightforward model: the people understand what is required, and when motivated, they deliver.
For Barangay Baganipay children, the evidence is already there: an operating classroom for the coming school year, constructed with passion by the members of their own community.
Maybe the answer lies not in more bureaucracy in a system beset for so long by inefficiency and corruption. Maybe the actual answer is to put more power immediately into people’s hands.
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