CeC Malvar was born on October 7, 2010. It was opened in a grand fashion with municipal and barangay officials present. There were lots of food and the attendees are people from different sectors. The parish priest did the blessing of the premises. One would think that this is a good omen, a sign that something good will happen and the CeC will be a successful undertaking.
However, the succeeding months at the CeC were lonely. No one would like to come and get inside an air conditioned room with six computers and one printer. Although we already had an information campaign before the opening, we did another massive information campaign so that the constituency of Malvar may know its existence. We coordinated with the church for announcements after mass and talked with barangay officials and barangay volunteers, sari sari store owners and school teachers.
The loneliness did not last long. Soon people flocked to the CeC and availed of its services. Happiness took over.
A little over a year after its opening, our Mayor started to receive letters requesting to visit our CeC. Mayor Carlito de la Peña Reyes, our ICT Champion always says yes. “This is a sign that we have improved. So let them come and see,” the Mayor said.
CeC Malvar received its very first guests from the Philippine CeC Study Visit Program on January 27, 2012. Telecentre.org also came over in June 2012. These visits were followed by six batches (30 to 50 each batch) of participants from the Development Academy of the Philippines’ training on the “Essentials of Community eCenter Management.
Exactly two years in October 2012, we were receiving awards both at the national and the international level. And visitors kept coming to see how we work and how we “made” it.
In 2013, we played hosts to visiting Telecentre.org interns from the Netherlands, India, Ecuador and the USA.
In 2014, we were visited by the ICT office of the Luzon Field Operations Clusters. On the same year, a photographer tied to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) came over to take pictures and videos of our women CeC graduates under their project “eGovernment for Women Empowerment.”
In early June 2015, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Technology and Social Change Group at the University of Washington Information School, the IDEA CORP and the Philippine component of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) project came together to also look at us.
This was followed by the engineers and employees from the ICTO-DOST MIMAROPA Provinces. CeC Carmona managers also came to look at our CeC on Wheels.
The last of our visitors for 2015 was Dr. Francisco Proenza of the Asian Development Bank who came to “understand what accounts for Malvar Center’s success and collect information that will help the Philippine government design a new technology for economic development (Tech4ED) program and give support to existing CeCs.”
What made me write about these past study tours and site visits?
Last week, on February 26, the Municipality of Guinayangan, Quezon Province, came in full force from Mayor Cesar J. Isaac III together with the Vice Mayor and Sangguniang Bayan Members, Municipal Government Department Heads and all the municipal employees – 180 of them. They made Malvar as one of its destinations during their Lakbay Aral to look at its CeC. The group was quite big and during my power point presentation about the CeC which, by the way, became one of our 5K program under K-Karunungan, I did not know if everyone listened and understood. But they visited one of our four stationary CeCs and our Mobile CeC and I heard some of them say, “we will also have one like this.”
This is overwhelming! I did not know we will come to this!
We need to keep our feet firmly planted on the ground. I have always told our group at the CeC and MPDC office that receiving visitors like them is just one of our jobs. I also made it a point to let the visitors see what is really happening. No put on because if there are we would not last. A phony presentation will always be uncovered and exposed, it just takes time.
The CeC Knowledge workers, MPDC staff and I would heave a sigh of relief after seeing the last of our visitors leave. And then we go back to work like nothing happened. For all of us here, this attitude is very important.
By Linda Navarro Balbuena, CeC Manager, CeC Malvar
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