PEF 2008 Annual Report now available
The 2008 Annual Report of the Peace and Equity Foundation, is now available for download in the Downloads section. The report, meant for public reading, covers activities in 2008. It also details PEF's operational strategies and goals as well as a number of interesting developmental insights on actual experiences drawn from the Foundation's various activities.
The message from the PEF Board Chairperson is as follows:
The Year 2008 augured crisis and challenge for the Foundation as a development
financing institution. While tremors of a complex global financial crisis
rocked Philippine institutions, and we all - private sector, government and
civil society - switched to survival mode and prepared for what was felt by many as
a long haul to financial and economic recovery.
In March 2008, I was elected as a new member of the Board of Trustees by the Peace
and Equity Foundation’s membership and subsequently also as its Chairperson.
The Year 2008 also marked major milestones for social change advocacies in
which I have been immersed through my years as a religious priest and as a social
scientist.
The 2nd National Rural Congress (NRC) after 40 years was convened by the Catholic
laity through their basic ecclesial communities from all Philippine dioceses. The
voices of the poor were heard by the clergy and civil society organizations – that
rural poverty is even now more insidious and intense, but that communities are
better organized and empowered yet still needing sustained support for overcoming
powerful forces of social injustice, inequality and violence.
Agrarian reform for rural poor remained an arduous struggle with a temporary
extension of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law. The farmers’ 1700 -
kilometer march from Sumilao, Bukidnon to Quezon City in 2007 rekindled the
dying fl ame of hope that “land to the tiller” and sustainable livelihoods could be
their children’s reality.
Peace, equity, and access to justice in the land of promise, Mindanao, still elude
us, especially the poor. War and violence, including abductions and killings of
ordinary people and social development workers, have created societal scars that
mar dialogue – the only clear path to peace. PEF has been called to provide relief
to internally displaced families, even while it has been constrained in moving funds
to sustained services like water and schooling in confl ict-ridden villages.
True to its mission to empower the poor, the Peace and Equity Foundation has
supported the poor rural sectors’ coming together to be heard. And still, underlying
these advocacy efforts, this Foundation continues to weave a social net of basic
social services, livelihood opportunities and social capital formation.
The Foundation’s main vehicle for poverty reduction, development financing, is not
only a funds mobilization outlet. PEF activated new modes of infusing funds in
development projects and further animated partnerships with other organizations
with a social mission. More signifi cantly, PEF has combined non-fi nancial and
intangible assets – such as knowledge, social organization, leadership, innovative
ideas, human talents - with the fi nancial and tangible capital resources that it has
preserved through its seven fl edgling years.
Together with my social and pastoral work as head of the Archdiocese of Cagayan
de Oro in Northern Mindanao, I consider myself blessed to share leadership with
a Board of Trustees of boundless energy and creative passion and have infl uence
in the directions of a socially meaningful Foundation.
We obtain strength in our faith in the Almighty One, in our civil society partners
and the rural poor whom we serve.
Most sincerely,
(signed)
Archbishopo ANTONIO J. LEDESMA, SJ DD.