Evaluating the national volunteering through Bayanihang Bayan program

• Main Author: Oplas, Ma. Ella C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Voluntarism—Philippines; Volunteers—Philippines; Civic and Community Engagement
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/11030
• Institution: De La Salle University

After 16 years of enactment, Presidential Memorandum Order (PMO) 45, Bayanihang Bayan Program (BBP) of the government that called for private sector participation in government service was opened for evaluation. Primarily, the evaluation wanted to know the result of the program at all levels focusing on relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability. These were made possible by the conduct of key informant interviews and focused group discussions with key stakeholders of BBP implementing and non-implementing agencies and units. Five programs were carefully chosen for case study.Primary findings showed that volunteerism is something not hard to sell to Filipinos. As showed by the BBP cases there is a vast number of individuals who are either not aware of the opportunities or are just waiting to be tapped to participate in government services.Likewise, there is definitely room for private sector participation in the government. Some may not directly associate their initiatives to BBP, but basically are already implementing private-public partnership when it comes to government service. The challenge for the government is how to harness the supply of potential volunteers.Monitoring and evaluation is critical in program conceptualization, planning and implementation. Results cannot be documented, successes cannot be recognized, and failures cannot be improved without a monitoring and evaluation system. This is an area where both the PNVSCA and lgus/ngas are lacking.There is a need to rethink the role of PNVSCA as “promoter”. The enabling environment for PNVSCA to serve such role is lacking. Despite the presence of several laws, there is no “teeth” for PNVSCA to actively push the government to implement and monitor. Likewise, financial resources are limited.