I thought I'd never get the chance to blog again. Well, I wasn't able to towards the end of the year. But now I've got a bit of "free time" to myself. No, not really. I just decided not to work for awhile; to say that the last days of 2006 (and consequently, the first weeks of 2007) was quite toxic is an understatement. If I made some good hits in the better part of 2006, I'd say that December went in and balanced everything by giving so much misses. There was the Global Fund to start with (both the current third round and the upcoming fifth round AIDS projects), then there's the ASEAN Summit's civil society forum, PNAC's partnership forum and the consultancy pet project.
The Global Fund's continuation of the round three AIDS project was for an extended time, since June 2006, suffering a series of starts and stops. With a considerably diminished amount of funding, and with the local government's plodding awakening to sustain the efforts, the project was ditched in a frenzy of implementation issues, most markedly with supporting management cost that would ensure equal if not better quality of results with a smaller pot. It's running now, whether it's efficient and effective is yet to be known. There was confusion and agitation in the consortium-type modality among NGOs in the four sites in Bicol region; in Southern Tagalog's two sites, it was debated who and how will the meager funds be managed. As for the other cluster areas, I'm not fully aware, but I'd bet that they were not having an otherwise easier situation.
The fifth round AIDS project was also a classic case of rumbles and grumbles at the top of the management chain. At the bottom, also known as "us implementing organizations," anxiety when it's going to begin was about to take its toll. The grapevine saved our sanity one day, when a juicy announcement sprouted that the call for project proposals was to be published on major newspapers. I trolled the newspapers - and realized in the process that newspapers don't come cheap anymore - but with each day of not seeing any announcement, enthusiasm drained by the buckets, indifference and bitterness took over. Eventually, the call came out (learned not through the newspapers, but through an e-group) just a week before the deadline. After several sleepless nights of rushing all the writing, on the day of the deadline, I was already feeling that numbness associated with sleep deprivation. Adrenaline was already rushing as I started that day working on the last portions of the proposal. Then came in a text message from colleagues; they've found out that the deadline was moved to January 3. I felt something drain inside; it could be blood or adrenaline or both.
On the day of the LGBT Pride March (it's traumatic organizing have to be reserved for some other time), I have a plane ticket to Cebu kept inside my bag. Just a few days ago, we were rushing into the staging of a civil society forum counterparting the ASEAN Summit. Our particular interest of course was supposedly the special declaration on HIV/AIDS. But we now all know of its postponement, allegedly due to the threat of a typhoon but now more popularly presumed because of so-called terrorist threats. So there I was, clutching onto the plane ticket, just in case. It didn't push through, much to civil society leaders' disappointment for the wasted support funding. At this point, I was really doubting whether any of the other initiatives would push through.
2006 was a high for me in participating in PNAC activities. It started with the universal access initiative, then the AMTP-IV operationalization, the national M&E system, the MSM consultation and the side trip to the PNCA in Davao City. As culmination of these efforts, it was thought the first partnership forum be held at year-end. We expressed our intent of participating in this one as organizers. However, the PNAC principal members, at the peak of the rush of organizing, decided to postpone to February. With good reason. But at this time, I was feeling already too frayed with all the "urong-sulong" goings on.
Pet projects were not able to draw me away from these development work pains. Just one pet project, actually, by year's end. We were looking into providing technical assistance (a consultancy) for a company's workplace diversity program. As with previous experiences with corporate clients, negotiations for something before the year ends should really have been done way before December. As expected by December principals on the client side were hard to follow through (read: locate), what with extended vacations, personal ambitions and such other pre-occupations (which actually, ours is one having to compete for attention with other activities like, what else, Christmas parties). Long story short, the development timeline earlier determined would now have to be delayed. All in all, while still regaining so much lost oxygen during the family noche buena, I saw myself doing so much in the last quarter of 2006 without really an opportunity to relish on concrete results.
As I watched the fireworks in Makati on New Year's Eve, I was thinking about these and realized that I'd have to brace myself for some rude awakening. Welcome 2007!
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In the TV series "24," the lead character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland will save someone or resolve something in a narrative time-lapse worth 24 hours every episode. There are days like this in my so-called professional life. Such was October 20 when I had again one of those marathon trips in line with official work, and some more for volunteer work, i.e. work to help out friends. I was up and about from 7AM, October 20 til 7AM the following day. What did I actually resolve? After several weeks of being in limbo with the second phase of the Global Fund project, we were suddenly jolted into having things start moving again; we were asked to make haste despite much of project modalities still being help up in air. Hay naku! All rush and tension were three-layer-cake-slicing thick in the air...
