The Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW) knows and values the importance of lobbying and advocacy work towards achieving its goal of promoting the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants. As such, the theme for this year’s Capacity-Building Seminar was on project planning, lobbying and advocacy.

The seminar was divided into four sessions, each of which deals with providing effective lobbying and advocacy work. The first session was on Team Building. It was conducted by Mr. Marte Rodriguez, Organizational Development Consultant for the Center for Empowerment and Resource Development. He emphasized the importance of building relationships and professionalism among members of a certain group in order to provide better venues for providing inputs on their respective projects or lobbying work. He also gave activities that were fun and yet informative, which helped the participants have a better appreciation of the lecture. This paved the way for the participants to have camaraderie and this also conditioned them for the following sessions.

The second session was on Project Development. Ms. Annie Baltazar of the Philippine Misereor Partnership, Inc. talked about the fundamentals of doing project proposals. She started her lecture by evaluating the knowledge of the participants in drafting a project proposal. She then discussed the importance of knowing the dynamics and inputs of a particular field they are concerned with. She stressed on the importance of team coordination as a factor for formulating a successful project proposal.

The third session was an advanced course on Project Development and Management, which was discussed by Fr. Fabio Baggio, Director of the Scalabrini Migration Center (SMC). Taking off from the previous session, Fr. Fabio discussed how to address the problems and the effective means to deliver the solutions. He said that addressing the problem is just addressing the causes, but stressed the need to look deeper into the problem in order to find a solution. The do’s and don’ts in formulating the budget needed by the funding agency, as well as what to include in it, were also discussed. The two consecutive courses provided the participants with an idea on how to address issues, how to make them be heard, and how to appeal to respective agencies.

Ms. Ellene Sana of CMA presented the final session on the importance of lobbying.  According to Ms. Sana, in terms of advocacy, public pursuit of social change is the key for attaining and winning a cause. She discussed key questions in doing some lobbying work, one of which is to anticipate what people would think of such causes and how to deal with them. After the lecture, a group activity was made. The participants were asked to do lobbying and advocacy work on a particular issue using different approaches such as how to address the government, the media, and other institutions. After the presentations, the participants consolidated these methods by having a mini-talk show where they applied the different methods learned.

To lighten the mood after all the learning and workshops, the nights were spent for socialization and fun. There was a film showing on the first night, karaoke singing and dancing on the second night, swimming, and games. It was a welcome respite after all the day’s serious and hard work.

The seminar achieved its objectives. This year’s capacity-building seminar on project planning, advocacy and lobbying answered the needs of organizations to provide for better ways to serve the Filipino migrants. The participants were informed and equipped with knowledge and tools to perform their tasks. At the same time, stronger bonds with members particularly those from different member organizations were formed.

The capacity-building seminar was held last August 9-11 at the La Roca de Trinidad resort in Los Baños, Laguna. A total of 29 participants from eight of PMRW’s member-organizations attended this event.