CFC Split over GK

[mazdamazda]

source here

I'm not a member of the CFC nor a Catholic but this is just disheartening. :sad:

Split in Couples for Christ May Hurt GK Housing Projects
By Carmela Fonbuena and Lala Rimando
Thursday, 23 August 2007

The split in the Couples for Christ (CFC) has far-reaching consequences on the Gawad Kalinga Foundation (GK), its popular social arm that has become a favorite beneficiary of big corporations and wealthy individuals here and abroad.

Gawad Kalinga has grown tremendously since Antonio Meloto founded it in 2000 as the CFC’s social arm. It now has a portfolio of 1,200 communities all over the country, which translates to about 22,000 homes for impoverished families nationwide, including Muslim-dominated provinces in Mindanao.

It has gained worldwide fame, likened to the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, an initiative that earned Muhammad Yunus his Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Meloto himself earned his Ramon Magsaysay Award for leadership in 2006.

But on July 30, CFC founder Frank Padilla and a few hundred supporters announced that they were leaving the group in protest over how GK was being managed. They complained that GK has shifted its focus “from the spiritual to the social.”

Padilla cited instances when GK chose not to push for natural family planning because some of its corporate partners favored population control and the use of contraceptives. “We clearly are going separate ways,” Padilla said in an open letter to members of the Catholic group. “We will focus on evangelization.”

Padilla and Meloto resigned from the Couples for Christ council in February 2007 to give the council a free hand in resolving the tension between the two of them. According to a close associate of Padilla, the failure of the new council to act on Padilla's concerns caused the split. (The elected members of the Couples for Christ council become automatic heads of Gawad Kalinga.)

The split has reached various corporate and institutional donors that have been supportive of Gawad Kalinga.

Gerardo Ablaza, Jr, chief executive officer of Globe Telecoms, which has sponsored a number of "Globe Villages" all over the country, told Newsbreak that they partnered with Gawad Kalinga because it is "aligned with the values of the company," not because it's a "religious organization."

The GK777 program aims to benefit 700,000 families by building 7,000 communities in seven years, or by the end of 2010.

While the funds and operational set-up needed for these targets will not be a problem, the split will most likely affect the projects’ constant supply of dedicated volunteers from the Couples for Christ.

Beyond Building

A Gawad Kalinga village usually stands out because the houses, which were built by both the house recipients and volunteers, are coated with colorful paints.

It’s a program that goes beyond building houses and donating construction materials. For each village, a "caretaker team" introduces value-formation seminars even before construction begins. After the houses are built, the team would continue to assist the villagers in education (usually a school is built on-site), employment (livelihood projects), and health, among others. This makes Gawad Kalinga unique from other program-based housing projects; it doesn’t intend to leave an area.

The concept has attracted the rich and the do-gooders. They have since been pouring their money into Gawad Kalinga. In 2006 alone, they donated P600 million.

For 2007, GK finance officer Michael Goco expects donations to reach P1 billion, making Gawad Kalinga one of the biggest non-profit organizations in the country. "As of now, getting donation is not a problem," Goco told Newsbreak. "It's more on how we deliver the goods."

And there lies the problem.

The cash donations account for just one-fourth of the total cost of building and maintaining a Gawad Kalinga village, where each house is valued at about P300,000. Donors essentially spend only P75,000 per house since their money is leveraged by the equivalent cost of the donated land, counterpart labor of the beneficiary, and most importantly, the man hours put in by volunteers.

Make or Break

The volunteers play a crucial part because their dedication to being part of the caretaker team can make or break a village.

Companies that have "adopted" Gawad Kalinga villages usually send employees—as part of their corporate social responsibility thrusts and work-life balancing efforts—to help during construction or to facilitate in various "transformation" seminars for villagers (to encourage them to be good neighbors, spouses, and parents). Schools such as the Ateneo, La Salle, and the University of the Philippines have also signed up their students to help out. But these volunteers usually come and go.

Most of those who commit to the program on a long-term basis are the members of Couples for Christ. They tirelessly see the village from conception to birth to its maturity.

Jun Valbuena is one of them. He has been shepherding Gawad Kalinga villages in the Baseco area in Tondo, Manila, since the group built eight colorful homes from the fire that gutted the shanty houses there in 2004.

Now he's been heading the team that tends to 21 villages in the same poor community. He visits the villages at least once a week, occasionally dealing with criminals and drunkards, and egging the parents to help their kids with their homework. "I do this not because I have to, but because I used to be a bad boy myself and I was reformed. This is my ministry."

But with the split, members of Gawad Kalinga have to make a decision: to stay with the current Couples for Christ leaders and continue their work in Gawad Kalinga, or join the breakaway group.

Easter Bunny

The other group is referred to as the Couples For Christ Foundation for Family and Life. They are more popularly known in church circles as the Easter Bunny Group since they openly expressed their concerns about GK on Easter day.

It’s not yet clear how many of the Couples for Christ members will be joining the breakaway group.

Padilla founded Couples for Christ in 1993 after breaking away with its main organization, Ang Ligaya ng Panginoon.

The split is a classic story of how two groups deal with ideological differences within the Catholic faith. At the center of the debate is whether GK should be used as an evangelization tool.

The Easter Bunny Group believes that GK should principally evangelize; other GK leaders prefer to work even with people who don’t strictly adhere to Catholic teachings.

In his open letter, Padilla alleged that Gawad Kalinga has "imposed silence on the connection of Gawad Kalinga to Couples for Christ because of the fear that some potential partners will not want to participate in a work that is ‘religious’.”

He also did not favor Gawad Kalinga's partnerships with corporations and universities that promote birth control and contraceptives, which are frowned upon by the Catholic Church.

"We are so intent on having as many partners as possible that we do not want to risk offending anyone. We are not pushing natural family planning in Gawad Kalinga areas simply because we know some corporate partners are for population control and strongly support the use of contraceptives," Padilla said in the letter. He refused to be interviewed for this story.

Gawad Kalinga was first conceptualized as a means to evangelize and recruit more members into Couples for Christ. The initial project, which was funded by Answering the Cry Of the Poor (Ancop), a foundation based in the US, was in Bagong Silang, Caloocan.

The strategy was to entice poor families to join Couples for Christ as GK builds houses for them and helps them find work. The success of this pilot pushed Couples for Christ to expand its social mission by inviting corporate partners. The rest, as they say, is history.

Meloto told Newsbreak that he and Padilla had been discussing the issues since 2003, the same year that Gawad Kalinga was spun off and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

God’s Army

Currently, Gawad Kalinga is into lifestyle evangelization, not your typical hard-core Catholic preaching. It's almost equivalent to charm offensive.

The dedicated volunteers share their own life stories when they interact with or facilitate a seminar for the villagers. Those who are moved would be invited to attend the Christian Life Program, a Catholic training for would-be Couples for Christ members.

Meloto explains that although Gawad Kalinga started with a spiritual mission, it need not be rigid in its goal of simply converting villagers into Couples for Christ members. "I realized while doing Gawad Kalinga work that my mission does not end there. It has to be the whole process—from the self, to the family, to the community, to the nation."

Nation building, Meloto said, inevitably involves engaging with other Christian groups and religious organizations.

"God used [Couples for Christ] as an army to build Gawad Kalinga on the ground but that army cannot do it alone. It has to partner with other religious organizations and unite the factions that divide the country. It's not a shift. It's an expansion of the mission."

Padilla disagrees. He raised fears in his letter that the Mormons, for example, would recruit Gawad Kalinga beneficiaries and turn them into their own missionaries.

Meloto's reply: "We are opening to other religions but not compromising our own charism and faith. I told the Mormons, I don't want to go to your church. I don't want to discuss religion. I want to find out what you are doing to the poor." The Mormons help in the water sewerage system of Gawad Kalinga communities....

[shadow]

human nature.......envy

[pajerokid]

money + religion = disaster. All we have to do is review history for more precedents.

[HyBrideVo]

One of the reasons why i left the SFC/CFC family here in Orlando is too much politics and BS.

[Bogeyman]

I think GK shouldn't be faulted for working with other denominations, such as the Masonic Order for example. Syempre gumagawa ng mga bahay ang GK eh, natural lang na kailangan nila ng mason, di ba?

Seriously, it is sad that a large religious following had to break up because of mundane differences. Pero personally, I never did put much stock in CFC. May kapitbahay kami na member, lagi kaming niyayayang sumapi sa kanila. My wife narrates how, years ago, that neighbor volunteered to help them build their house, only to cheat them by overpricing the materials and labor involved. It took several touch-up jobs before the house became decent enough for my wife's family to live in (hanggang ngayon nga, may mga lamat pa rin sa walls eh). Yun namang anak niyang dalaga, nabuntis at tinakbuhan. Tapos ngayon, split na ang CFC. It's like the case of fraternities/sororities; I don't need to join some religious group, Catholic or otherwise, just to affirm my spirituality.

I personally prefer the work Gawad Kalinga is doing, even if the Restoration Movement deplores it as "sleeping with the enemy". Yun nga lang, the Catholic bishops will obviously side with Padilla's group, simply because they can relate with the evangelical concerns raised. It's actually pretty ironic to think that CFC itself started as a breakaway group, and now they themselves are becoming divided...

[ogpro]

There's a lot of background info on this that can be found here:

http://defendingcfc.blogspot.com/

[Eismann]

People in CFC and GK should realize that this current row is clearly the work of some dark forces aiming to trounce the goodwill of this community/family based activity of CFC's GK777.
Managers of GK projects and those involved in dispensing monetary services should ask for more grace and guidance. Money, as always, is a powerful tool of the devil.

[Galactus]

All it comes down to is the bottomline...money. 1 Billion of it. Even the Catholic Church has had scandals when it comes to money. It will corrupt even the gentlest of souls. The other issues are just gravy.

Usap-usapan na talaga sa CFC yan, I have lots of friends there in different chapters. Ayaw lang ilabas sa media, kasi masamang tingnan na ang pinag-aawayan talaga is pera.

[Isuzoom]

tsk..tsk... money.... iba na kasi ang nakilala kong CFC akala mo sila na perfect na tao sa mundo tapos naging sila sila na lang always magkasama.

[ogpro]

I hope you guys can separate the CFC members from its leaders and not generalize. The vast majority of its members are just people who are looking to do Christ's work, and GK is one of the pillars of their efforts. I'm not personally a member but I can see the good that GK has done, and wouldn't like to see it all go to waste because of a quarrel in the leadership of CfC and that break away group.

[torque2006]

I actually expectes this before pa. As one friend put it, GK is becoming "too commercialized".

Eh CFC is more on the conservative side, if you compare it to other religious organizations.

[Horsepower]

I don't understand why they'd quarrel and actually break up over this. It's a non-issue.

[mazdamazda]

I support Boo Chanco's stand on this:

Is Gawad Kalinga too good to last?
DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo Chanco
Friday, August 31, 2007

Two weeks ago, I received an e-mail that gave me information about the internal problems of Gawad Kalinga and Couples for Christ stalwarts. The e-mail detailed the split in the leadership and left open the question of how the Catholic Church hierarchy regards Gawad Kalinga in view of the split.

I went against my instincts as a journalist and decided not to write about it when I received that email. This is the kind of bad news I wish would just go away. Also, I felt bad enough to be the first to write a column about the simmering problems of GK and CFC leaders last February. That column, the e-mail writer pointed out, caused Tony Meloto to resign his positions in the Church ministries. But even then, I only wrote about it at that time, out of a journalistic obligation to present a reader reaction to a column that lauded the Gawad Kalinga and Meloto.

I guess the story of the leadership crisis is too good to ignore for long. Vic Agustin wrote two columns in the Standard over the past week on the subject and Ces Drilon had a report aired on it last Tuesday evening on ANC. Newsbreak had a story on it too in its website. What I find sad is the impression it leaves that we Pinoys can’t stand a successful venture. Soon enough, crab mentality sets in and the venture becomes too good to last.

As I piece together the details of the sad and sordid mess, it appears that the crisis apparently started with some disagreements between Frank Padilla (the CFC founder) and Tony Meloto, dramatized by their resignation from the CFC Council early February of this year. Padilla is now leading a splinter group which he calls CFC FFFL (Foundation for Family and Life).

As is typical with many Filipino groups, the problem eventually involves an election. Apparently, Padilla wanted to get back to the CFC council through its regular elections scheduled last June. When it was apparent that he couldn’t get back his position, he tried to have the election postponed. But the elections pushed through and a new council was elected with supporters of Meloto winning the contest.

A number of bishops, supposedly at Padilla’s prodding, threatened to cut off CFC from their diocese, recognizing only the new FFFL. Meloto’s group was accused of turning non catholic. Among others, Meloto was criticized for taking in monetary support from corporations that advocated artificial family planning methods and for working with non Catholics, like the Mormons and the Muslims.

There were also allegations of misuse of funds from both sides. Meloto was asked to account for donations received with the suggestion that not enough houses have been built. On the other hand, Padilla was asked to account for the P50 million in assistance provided by the Department of Health (DOH) to promote natural family planning methods. There are also questions on the handling of tithes given to CFC by its members.

In his interview by Ces Drilon, Meloto said he had asked SGV to audit all funds donated to Gawad Kalinga. Meloto also said he was embarrassed to even have to answer that question in a public interview since trust is the essential element behind Gawad Kalinga’s success.

If the Catholic Bishops eventually side with Padilla, what happens to Gawad Kalinga? While GK now has an internal capacity to raise funds and is organized to operate on its own, the split could affect the supply of dedicated volunteers from the CFC. CFC members constitute the backbone of GK volunteers and many of them are there because of the Church backing. So that even if the newly elected CFC officers support Meloto, it is not certain they will be able to keep their members once the Bishops withdraw support.

But Gawad Kalinga is too good an idea to give up just because it became too successful. It is one of the rare instances when the Catholic Church is identified with a popular project that addresses poverty and the right of every human being to a life with dignity. GK gives the Catholic Church in the Philippines an unusual relevance in addressing a temporal need of its flock.

I can’t help smirking when I read one of the accusations of Padilla that Meloto has strayed from the spiritual ministry of CFC and had become too temporal. GK under Meloto had been accused by Padilla of not strictly advocating the Church’s Pro-Life doctrine and is compromising with donors who advocate artificial contraception.

Meloto denied the accusation in his interview with Ces Drilon. But even if he is guilty as charged, I can’t see what the problem is. For evangelization to be significant in the lives of our poor, it has to be more than spiritual. Would the Church rather have the poor reproduce like rats and live with vermin in the streets, without any human dignity so long as its so-called Pro-life doctrine is upheld? Shouldn’t there be a Church supported program here on earth to house in dignity all those people reproducing themselves to Armageddon? How can anything be pro-life if it ignores the quality of our people’s lives?

Meloto’s GK addresses that problem with this very novel housing experiment that proved more than viable. I know too that one of the things GK insists on before they even break ground is the matter of spiritual and values formation among the beneficiaries. There is a “caretaker team” for each proposed village that introduces value-formation seminars at the early part of any project. After the houses are built, the team would continue to assist the beneficiaries in education (usually a school built on-site, like those Meralco Sibol schools), employment (livelihood projects), and health, among others.

This makes Gawad Kalinga unique. Much depends on the dedication of the volunteers in the caretaker teams. GK does not build and leave. Follow through after the homes are turned over is very important and that is perhaps the primary reason for its success. Raising the money and building the houses are the easy parts of the GK experience.

Gawad Kalinga has now built some 1,200 communities all over the country, or about 22,000 homes for impoverished families nationwide, including Muslim-dominated provinces in Mindanao. I remember Datu Toto Paglas telling me that when GK built houses in his province, many in his Muslim rebel constituency were so touched by the gesture of Christians building homes for poor Muslim families they became predisposed to think of the potentials of living in peace.

The current program of GK aims to benefit 700,000 families by building 7,000 communities by the end of 2010. It is too good to be allowed to wither in the face of a decision by the Catholic Bishops to withdraw support. If the Catholic Church would no longer have it, civil society should adopt it and give it even more fire. A withdrawal of Church support may even be the best thing that could happen to GK because of the opportunity that will create for every segment of society to now call it its own.

The Church’s loss, if it withdraws, is the nation’s gain. The League of Corporate Foundations, Philippine Business for Social Progress as well as non-business NGOs should adopt GK as its mass housing project. GK should become a non sectarian effort, the Filipino version of Habitat for Humanity. More important, we have to prove to ourselves that we are able to sustain a good idea and protect it from dying or falling victim to the usual crab mentality for which many leaders in Pinoy communities here and abroad are known for.

We have to separate the personalities from the project. Tony Meloto may have won awards for leading GK but GK is not Tony Meloto. GK is the Filipino who is ready to share of himself to house a fellow Filipino and give him the opportunity to live in dignity that every human being deserves. If the Catholic bishops and the Padilla group cannot see this, we will have to show them.

Here’s hoping that Gawad Kalinga will survive this leadership crisis, one way or another. It is too good an idea to lose, specially because there is still so much work to be done.

[bunge]

Mas maganda siguro na maging non-sectarian na lang ang GK.

[Horsepower]

I definitely agree with Boo Chanco also. Crab mentality lang ito.

I don't know where the crab mentality gene in the Filipinos came from... too much mixing of bloods i guess.

[b1rken5tock]

money and power....and INGGIT!!!!

[Horsepower]

Actually, GK only wants to build communities. They aren't even longing for power. They just want to do God's work.

[Flagg]

Siguro, para may unity, dapat sundan ang El Shaddai model...

[Lucius]

Pa CFC CFC pa kasi sila, mga nagmamalinis lng mga tao halos dun. Thank God I never wanted to take part on that eversince I was a kid.

Dapat nila itawag sa kanila Corruption From Christ. Kala mo mga santo eh parepareho lang naman tayong mga tao dito.

[Bogeyman]

Siguro, para may unity, dapat sundan ang El Shaddai model...

Lahat ng damit ng members eh loud ang kulay?