The Basic Ecclesial Community Movement in the Philippines

In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development defined sustainable development as being development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development is based upon intergenerational equity (the assurance to future generations of the ability to meet their needs) and intragenerational equity (an equitable distribution of the current economic output among those alive today). In the developing world, recent efforts to achieve sustainable development, in both an intergenerational and intragenerational manner, have seen a shift from government sponsored policies and programs to what could be called postmodern public administration, which is an attempt to respond to the fundamental needs of the poor, marginalized, and oppressed without challenging political arrangements.

In the Philippines, the Roman Catholic Church has organized a Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC) movement to provide bottom up methods of achieving integral human development for the poor. The BEC is a group of between 50 to 100 families organized by the Church on a parish-by-parish basis. BECs engage in sustainable livelihood programs such as organic farming, microfinance projects, marketing cooperatives, herbal medicine projects, and handicraft projects. This research project studies the BEC movement on the island of Mindanao first-hand, with a view to evaluating the effectiveness of this type of postmodern public administration mechanism as a vehicle for providing development.

Department of Geography Faculty Participants: