2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

Back to list

Kidapawan: Advancing the People Organizations of Kidapawan through innovation and development of social capital (APOKIDS)

Official proposal

02/06/2023 12:50

Programs, projects, and services will not be that impactful unless they change lives, promote progress, and provide solutions to problems in the community. The Local Government of Kidapawan in the Philippines aims in making Kidapawan a commercial and industrial metropolis of Cotabato Province, driven by a resilient and prosperous, humane society that really desires to implement programs and projects that could help our people solve solutions to the existing problems that we have. This is the reason why Advancing the People Organizations of Kidapawan (APOKIDS) exists, as it is for the Kidapaweños. It aims to promote the establishment and operation of people and non-government organizations to become active partners in the pursuit of local autonomy, as we desire to make our city a better place to live where people do small things with great love.

The APOKIDS program was made possible thanks to the initiative of the people beyond, people with great hearts and minds. To the community leaders and the People’s Organization (PO) members who willingly undergo the process. This program testifies that the government and its people share the same values and goals for a progressive Kidapawan.

To this end, the leaders of the community profiled the groups, gave them training and workshops, and led them in strengthening their organizations through facilitation using the ORID tool and the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) methodology. To add to the goals of this program is to prepare various organizations already present in the community for change through the development of social capital. We focus on the strengths of the PO, not looking at the weaknesses. We look at things that the PO can offer, not at what they cannot do. Finally, we fix our eyes on what we can improve for the future and not on our limitations.

With this program and its process, individuals and the facilitators were able to learn from one another and share ideas on how to better specifically their tactics for managing their organizations during this program's implementation. Additionally, the facilitators strive to make people aware of their ability to contribute to the growth of local autonomy in the city.

The community, in particular those organizations already present in the area, will be greatly impacted by this initiative since they will be able to use their organizations to solve current issues in the community.

Above all, this becomes possible and successful and hopefully will continue to be effective and touch lives through the facilitators from various departments in the Local Government of Kidapawan who carefully observed how this program affected various people's organizations. We will continue to bring innovations, because after a process even if some of those will be painful, surely there will be growth and progress, not only for a few groups but also for the rest of the people in the city, and in the future will reflect its neighboring cities and municipalities as we all dream of progress for us and for the generations to come.