Articulating Ecosystem-based Community-centered Sustainable development Organization and Management
ABSTRACT
This study seeks to contribute to theorizing on the processes of symbolism and the
construction of meaning in the communicative context of community organizing. In
particular, the Social Helix rises out of the study to illustrate the relationship between
consciousness and development.
The organic development of the Ecosystem-based Community-centered Sustainable development Organization and Management (ECSOM) protocol within the participatory frame of the Asian Social Institute’s (ASI) sectoral organizing process is studied. Articulations (oral and visual) of participants generated in this process are regarded as manifestations of consciousness. These are explored in an attempt to understand difficulties and strengths inherent in ECSOM embedment, including pertinent residual and emerging values and concepts, which may define ECSOM in context.
Articulations in the 1st CSBCOM consultation established in part the economic and socio-cultural context of ECSOM embedment. It was found that group cohesion and mutual support are the major motivating forces in the consciousness of participants relative to meaning and fulfillment in life. Moreover, there is an emerging consciousness that recognizes the gains accruing to society with the realization of personal and organizational goals.
The 2nd CSBCom consultation focused on ASI’s symbol-making approach to social development, which is contingent on participants constructing powerful symbols whose meanings resonate in their hearts and minds, spurring them to collective action. A rich harvest of sensitizing concepts was generated in the participants’ oral explication of their symbols regarding the meaning of CSBCom to their lives, such as likas-kayang pag-unlad to refer to sustainable development and ugnayang-buhay at kabayanan to refer to bioregion. Such concepts reflect a mindset that is attuned to balance and holism in the preservation of the natural order of life; while the visual representations translate into a montage of expanded insights into what is still to be achieved.
Articulations of CYASF youth relative to their appreciation of the practicum module of the Holistic Environmental Education Program, which entailed tree planting and echoing in selected communities of acquired knowledge in environmental care, are preponderant likewise in the Interactive Dimension of Being (e.g., pakikihalobilo, pakikisalamuha, pakikipagkapwa). Interaction with others helped the youth realize themselves more fully, but family remains their foremost influence.
In the researcher’s effort to piece together and understand relative to ECSOM embedment the various strands of human experience in the three events he selected for study, the Social Helix emerged as eidetic insight. It visualizes the growth of human consciousness (noosphere) driven by creative impulses emanating from the nexus of the dimensions of Being (integrative realm of expressed thought) in response to psychosocial and psychobiological challenges in the participants’ lifeworld (biosphere).
Deza, A. B. (2012). Articulating Ecosystem-based Community-centered Sustainable development Organization and Management: The Asian Social Institute’s Experience in Participatory Communication and Social Technology Development in Rizal, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication, Diliman, Quezon City.