TOP 15 BAGUIO-BARANGAYS HONORED FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP IN CLEANLINESS AND CIVIC PRIDE UNDER KALINISAN PROGRAM
The recent conferral of the Top 15 Barangays to the DILG Baguio City Field Office is a milestone accomplishment in the local governance system. The barangays, as a result of the KALINISAN Program, exhibited a very effective and productive mode of local grounded leadership in the spirit of cleanliness and order. One of the main features of the KALINISAN Program, Barangay Road Clearing
Operation (BARCO) has shown how even the little local initiatives can lead to making public places and spaces that have improved local safety and accessibility, and have improved mobility within the neighborhood level to ward off nuisance-causing behaviors associated with
poor urban development and backward marginalized individuals.
The recognition of the local leaders, volunteers in the validation undertaken by the CVATT compels those local initiatives to be accountable, credible, and impactful around sustainability. Out on site, the CVATT members validated the support initiatives the
barangays had undertaken, and saw first hand the voluntary concrete delivery of individually initiated sustainable clean up programs, aligned with national sustainable cleanliness goals, to which the performance of these acknowledges as a commitment of responsibility to
their respective localities. The award is a great accomplishment, but perhaps more importantly, it represents a paradigm shift in a
community’s view points around civic consciousness.
Through community initiatives that involve the residents, the local leaders, and local volunteers, the resident’s noted that when working together it is possible to live sustainably, and have organized and clean living quarters and spaces in congested urban areas like Baguio.
Overall, the strength of the top 15 barangays, under the assistance of KALINISAN, reflects that local change can be made in the smallest of units of communities. The example of collective and unitarian action towards realizing civic pride, personal or community discipline to effect social change in a community with the aim that collectively, one will see that their limited and individual change makes a
collective distinction within their community, and has a real chance to become national transformation.
Lorie Bernadette Laririt/UC-Intern
