Didi Quimpo recalls one plane ride back home from a business trip abroad five years ago that dramatically altered the course of her advocacy as a social development worker. Comfortably slouched in her seat enjoying the flight, she was momentarily drawn to a news feature flashed on the plane’s video screen.

The report was about how rampant the phenomenon of pedophilia is in Third World countries like the Philippines. But to her dismay, the supporting film footage seemed more an endorsement of it, what with a charming, well-to-do Caucasian male shown cavorting in an idyllic beach resort that resembled every bit pristine Boracay Island. It even left viewers with an instruction that children’s sexual favors can be bought at US$10 a night.

“Instead of sounding like a condemnation of pedophilia, it sounded more like an advertisement—‘Come to the Philippines, pedophiles. Kids are cheap and you can have fun.’ It bothered me a lot,” she laments.

At the time, the Uswag Development Foundation, the Kalibo-based non-government organization primarily involved in socio-economic projects for Aklan’s poor folk that she heads, was espousing health concerns, in particular, the issue of HIV/AIDS infection. “It was a related concern but it wasn’t focused on children,” she says.

What brought additional impetus to her burning desire to do something about the issue of sexual abuse among children was the arrest in January 1996 of two foreigners, a Dutch and a German. Both were caught by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation while on vacation in Boracay with two young girls, aged nine and 12. Found in their hotel rooms were photographs and other materials that showed evidence of pedophilia. The two were able to post bail and leave the country before their trial. They were however nabbed in England and are now serving sentences in their respective countries.

To Didi’s mind, Uswag’s HIV/AIDS awareness campaign needed expanding or refocusing to highlight what she considers a more vital concern—child sexual abuse in her home province. But such an endeavor required more than the usual coalition-building efforts among its regular partners. The response no less necessitated a multi-sectoral dimension.

Thus was born the Citizens’ Council on Social Concerns (CCSC) in March 1996. Under Uswag’s helm, and with funding support from the Partners Program of the USAID granted to the Gerry Roxas Foundation, the Council was able to bring together all the relevant sectors for one common vision, that of a child sexual abuse-free Aklan.

Hand in hand in promoting and protecting the rights of children against sexual abuse in the CCSC are representatives from government, both local and national; print and broadcast media; business; academe; local civil society organizations, including women, youth and the disabled sector; law enforcement agencies; and the legal profession.

Admittedly, Didi did not harbor high expectations of the media at first. By then, Uswag had only begun to seriously consider working with the media for its HIV/AIDS advocacy project. Such initial engagement had somehow betrayed not a few of its members to be peripheral in their coverage of community issues. But the coalition experience gradually made her realize the folly of this perception, finding in the media an invaluable ally in development work.

It helped that the CCSC has as one of its active members a young radio broadcast journalist from GMA Super Radyo-Aklan. Previously with Radio Mindanao Network’s dyKR, Jay Tejada is no stranger to organizing and advocacy work. He had been a community organizer before pursuing a career in radio. Polio-stricken at age two, he also sits as representative of the disabled sector in the Council.

Though he has since taken a different path, Jay has not stopped thinking of ways to help empower the people so they can make their lives better. In the five years he has been with RGMA, his weekly radio program has served as a venue to enlighten them about the more relevant concerns. Still, he felt something was amiss or lacking in the practice of journalism in Aklan.

“My feeling was that merely reporting the news was not enough. We needed to know more, we needed to understand the issues better not only to make us better journalists but also in some way help communities look at their own problems and begin solving them.”

Jay was actually looking for a reconnection with the Aklan communities he had served as a non-journalist before. That opportunity first came with the multi-sectoral coalition that finally resolved to lick the social menace of child sexual exploitation.

The 29-year-old broadcast journalist admits to being overwhelmed by the community response to the campaign. Limog it Pag-eaum (Voice of Hope), the radio program he hosts, would get swamped by a lot of calls from listeners offering assistance to victims, giving their peso’s worth of advice. One specific instance he likes to cite was the case of a sixteen-year-old girl abused by her father since she was ten, and whose case was dismissed by the fiscal’s office after the victim executed an affidavit, upon the intervention of her mother, withdrawing her complaint.

The girl, it turned out, had also written a letter to her younger sister, who was also being abused by their father, to explain why she had to lie in her statement. That letter eventually became the hot topic of discussion on air.

“We got so many callers offering us information on legal processes, and they were using legal terms. Maybe they were people from the fiscal’s office sympathetic to us, or just concerned private lawyers,“ Jay recalls.

Children and Women’s Desks were set up in police stations. By April 1998, 14 out of the 17 Aklan municipalities had CWDs in place, manned by officers trained in specific laws addressing children and women’s rights.

Though many of the Council members see the coalition moving towards a more service-oriented thrust, Jay sees there’s still much work to be done at the level of advocacy.

“We want to go further towards enhancing collaboration, especially with the legal system since it remains insensitive to the issue,” he remarks, noting the absence of a government prosecutor in the Council’s membership.

Though it proved to be one commendable undertaking, Jay’s CCSC involvement has really only served to initiate the journalist in him further along the path of public journalism.

Seeing how people are involving themselves at the local level to make a difference strengthened his resolve to re-fashion his craft. His formal introduction to the concept of public journalism came in 1998 during a seminar for journalists from Region VI sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, a German foundation espousing active citizens’ participation in governance.

A year earlier, he had encountered the Evelio B. Javier Foundation, an NGO engaged in projects providing for interfacing mechanisms between the media and local governments anchored on the governance frameworks of democratization and decentralization under the 1991 Local Government Code.

On an even more positive note, the Aklan journalists welcomed the fact that the community did recognize their role in community development. But, as they realized during the sessions, that entailed regarding themselves as citizens first with crucial roles to play in the community. Doing so helped them in coming up with public journalism action plans addressing the primary issues and concerns identified by the community—the drug menace, garbage disposal and management, flashfloods—in the next seven years.

Emracing the idea of public journalism, believes Butz Maquinto, erstwhile RMN news manager and now RGMA chief, is inevitable. “I think we were headed in that direction. Besides, the people no longer just expect us to broadcast the news or entertain them. It has come to a point where it’s already an imperative to become involved.”

Such a collective resolve among the Aklan media has helped programs like Limog it Pag-eaum evolve from a dyKR venture solely hosted by Jay back in 1996 into what it is today. Every Friday beginning noontime, Limog it Pag-eaum airs as a simultaneous broadcasting endeavor that includes three other radio stations—RGMA’s dyRU, IBC’s dyRG and dyMT-FM of the Aklan State University.

The KBP has given the one-hour program free airtime to tackle no longer just child abuse cases but to monitor the performance of elected public officials, giving Aklanons more opportunities to participate in public life.

To the cynic, such an alliance would seem highly unlikely, especially in a medium that is known for the fierce, sometimes venal, competition between rival stations.

Jay himself admits it was not easy when they started. “Since we were from different stations with our respective programming, it reflected on the focus we initially put on the issue. We have to admit there’s really competition. But that’s natural. We just have to agree to a common ground, and that’s the welfare of the children of Aklan,” he says.

Eventually, the competitive drive yielded to the cooperative spirit. The stations came together to agree on a format, lined up topics on a monthly basis, coordinated with the concerned agencies, and visited areas where the problems were reported.

With Limog it Pag-eaum also came a significant perceptible change in the way reporting is now done on issues like rape and child abuse. Previously, questions hurled at victims took any of this insensitive variety—“How were you raped?”, “Were you hurt?” or “Did you enjoy it?” Names of the victims and their families were mentioned without regard to their privacy or the case’s confidentiality. As a result, journalists had to undergo a special training on child sensitivity, as well as on the legal protection and law enforcement aspect involving child abuse cases.

The current focus of the radio program is actually an extension of the “Media in Partnership with the Community for Good Governance” project through the KBP that begun with the collaborative media coverage of the May 2001 mid-term elections. As a continuing public journalism program, it initiated voters’ education on the process of elections, fraud prevention, and provided effective venues for voters-candidates consultation and dialogues.

More importantly, in these forums were forged covenants between the candidates and the community to serve as post-election monitoring and feedback mechanisms by which the performance of elected officials will be assessed.

These took the main form of a people’s agenda drafted during a multi-sectoral consultation in April facilitated by the radio stations and the KBP. About a hundred representatives of the various sectors from the 17 municipalities of the province—academe, government, business, the media, NGOs, people’s organizations, religious, youth and women’s groups—took part in the whole-day activity.

Participants identified six areas of concern which they want their elected officials to address—environment and tourism; peace and order; education; children, women and family; livelihood; and agriculture and production. In each specific area, they then enumerated improvements they want achieved, the most pressing problems that require immediate attention, and possible solutions that public officials may adopt.

With support from the Commission on Elections, the Philippine Information Agency, and civil society partners like Uswag, the people’s agenda was formally presented during the Candidates Forum broadcast live on Limog it Pag-eaum.

Of these initiatives, dyKR’s Nida Lachica sees the seeds of people empowerment. “It was the first time that something like this happened in Aklan, where contending parties and candidates were brought together to face the community. And I admired the courage of the people in confronting the candidates with questions, asking what their concrete objectives were in seeking public office.”

These days, Limog it Pag-eaum enjoys immense listenership erstwhile the monopoly of trite, inconsequential daytime soap operas. As a profession, journalism, too, has never been regarded with more respect in Aklan than now. This, Jay credits, to the initial steps the Aklan journalists have taken towards bridging the disconnections in the public realm—not only between citizens and its government but also between the community and its news media.

Doing public journalim, the Aklan journalists have ceased to imagine themselves and their work outside of the community, that they cannot have a story without taking the community into account.

But the key, Jay says, is first knowing one’s community. “What can they do to help themselves? Start from there. Be a facilitator. Don’t think that you can do it by yourself. The community has its power. It’s a matter of tapping their resources, their potentials.” (Jay R. Tejada, R-GMA Kalibo)