The San Francisco Model San Francisco with population of 45.000 is one of the 4 municipalities of the Camotes Islands (total population of 80.000) in Cebu province, the Philippines. It is a third class Municipality divided into 15 Barangays and 120 Puroks. Livelihood is predominantly fishery dependent and only recently starting tourism (community based- and towards eco tourism). Fragile coastal environment. Former Mayor Alfredo Arquillano (now Vice Mayor), and Champion of the Making Cities Resilient, led the program in San Francisco. He had been Mayor for the maximum three terms since 2002 (9 years). His father had been a Mayor- the first to promote change - and now his brother is Mayor. Think Big - Start Small was Mayor Als policy base. In 2004 he introduced the strengthened Purok system as basis for community based governance and empowerment, to work on the planning, maintenance and implementation of development: keep registers and information base; plan roads, production, drainage, ornamental planting, vegetable gardens, cleanliness campaigns, garbage, finance-CBU, etc. It took 7 years to develop and establish the system in all 120 Puroks. The programme started only with a few willing Puroks in the Town Proper where the Municipality office is. First reaction by many people was waste of time. Only when the first one started to work, and showed results, others followed. The Purok system was first introduced in 1950s for education purpose. San Francisco first purchase was an excavator for the Municipality to initiate rehabilitation of roads and solid waste management to carry out its first task to improve accessibility of the Barangays as a prerequisite for economic activity including tourism. They started to compact roads everywhere, including drains and then followed by paving the main roads. The maintenance of roads and drains is now with the Puroks and individual home owners. Other activities included planning for drainage system as a whole, run off systems, especially when rehabilitating access roads, planning for pea tonal and bikes- safety, considering enough width of roads. Now, San Francisco has reformed the concept and replicated the Barangay structure with committees (8) at Purok level. One reason cited from its success is that they report not only to the elected Barangay representative- but has also directly to the Mayor and Municipality- they deliver their reports monthly. It is also very transparent with all the data and information available in the community hut of the Purok, including on finance. Some of them have been able to collect and raise funds that are used as revolving fund for small livelihood projects or other activities. Each Purok (between 40-200 household organizational structure) has the 5 priorities of HFA written up on a big board in local language, plus another one with the 8 MDGs. San Francisco was one of UN-Sasakawa Awardees, and since joining the Campaign, and with technical support from UNISDR, has launched a 2 million tree planting project (a big sign in the plant nursery is recognizing UNISDR), The Mayor visited all the Puroks to share the picture from the UN-Sasakawa award 1 For further information on San Francisco and good practices, refer also to the Report of City-to-city Study Visit of Sri Lanka Mayors to San Francisco, 25-27 August 2011 and show the trophy since they were the reason San Francisco won the award (community based governance structure with amazing results)
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 23:55:28 +0000
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