It is like planting a tree

It has been a year since we started this journey – this peculiar project where we hope to converge our skills and ideals. This project became a vehicle for us to build a grassroots web linking our own network to theirs. When barangays and public schools conduct youth development trainings, we get invited to facilitate and deliver inputs. This has been the consistent pattern, which was well pronounced during the recent months.

The platform we are provided for is an opportunity to frame our narrative as a youth project. In our inputs in the barangays and in the public school, we consistently emphasize the basic question our generation should ask and understand: Why are we poor? What made us poor? And what can we do about it?

These questions strike as the very core of our public mission. It is to reach as many young people as possible and to let them see that their personal growth and success as human beings are inextricably linked to the growth and success of their immediate community. We cannot realize our fullest potential in the absence of a community that nurtures our own development.   

Development therefore is ultimately an issue about power. Young people should understand how power flows, that is – being acted upon or the one who exert it. Considering our sheer size, our energy, our memory, which is unburdened by a past and our hearts that look into the future with brimming hope - we can choose to exert it. That spells the huge difference.

This idealism of owning our development as opposed to a development dictated by entrenched interests can be translated into practical doable things. It is as simple as reporting a broken streetlight or as complex as advocating a progressive policy. The tools are many but the idea is old and the same. We have to continue to work for and demand better public institutions.

Development as history tells us is dependent so much on the quality of our public institutions. Institution building is like planting a tree. Sometimes, we cannot see the fruits of our labor. It takes time to grow. It takes time to take root. It takes generations to fulfill. But in our time, we can say we did our best to bring a better world for the next generation to carry on.

So when asked why are we poor, never accept it as a gift from above. it is a social cancer. But unlike cancer, we have the ability to get rid of it. We have the number, the talent, and the heart to rebuild our institutions from inside and out.