Grassroots development planning: a rhetoric or a springboard to community action

It is said that participation is an essential element to the success of community development or in extension because it enhances people's exposure and understanding to technological information and in enhancing people's confidence towards adopting an innovation. This study took cognizance on the role of the development beneficiaries to chart their own destiny. The Program/Project/Activities (P/P/A) under consideration here were gleaned to be designed not only to achieve a healthy and well-nourished beneficiaries but in the process, too, "stimulate independent thinking" among would-be benefactors through a process of participative planning p/p/asubs and their appraisal, through an enhanced facilitation by academic institutions of higher learning, designed and implemented by the village people in partnership with the GOs [government organizations] and NGOs [non government organizations]. Ultimately, however, the planned p/p/asubs are implemented and managed by the people themselves. The study aimed to: 1) determine the extent of people's involvement in a people-oriented development program or activities, 2) determine the problems in development planning encountered by a people-oriented grassroots level development programs, 3) synthesize the pre-conditions and strategies in enhancing grassroots level involvement in development planning for their own improvement, and 4) to come out with some recommendations which may enhance grassroots level development planning. The study was conducted based on the existing documents and records of the BIDANI [Barangay Integrated Development Approach for Nutrition Improvement] Network Program implemented in the seven regions of the country from an original of 6 barangays [villages] in Laguna and Batangas since 1978 up to the present. This was further supported by data/information from BUCAF-BIDANI of the Bicol Region and the UPLB-BIDANI catchment area. Results of the study tended to show that the involvement of people at the grassroots level in development planning of integrated programs will not become rhetorics if the needed preparations are well-attended and internalized by the project actors, including the local leadership. As an advocate commended, "it could be done---it must be done!" Democratic self-determinations can be kept alive only to the extent that we are able to maintain and continuously renew a vigorous community life at the local base of our society.