Among CODE-NGO’s strategic objectives is to further strengthen its existing partnerships and forge new ones in order to support our capacity development programs for our members and our policy advocacy work. Looking back at 2019, what worked for CODE-NGO were the following:

1) Institutional track record and goodwill from long-time partner organizations

Even though leaderships may have changed in our respective organizations, we were able to bank on and to harness the goodwill of our long-time institutional partners for support of our work and advocacies. This is particularly true with our engagement with the Philippine Open Government Partnership (OGP). Our long-time linkages with the bureaucracies of DBM, DILG, UP National College of Public Administration, Jesse Robredo Institute of Governance, and many OGP-participating CSOs outside of our network contributed to an expanded co-creation process in the formulation of the Philippine OGP National Action Plan 2019-2021. Our engagement here also created for us new links with other government agencies such as DepEd’s Last Mile Schools Program and PHILGEPS on open contracting.

This year also, CODE-NGO signed a MOA with the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF) for the latter’s long-term institutional support for CODE-NGO. Bound by a common history, PEF institutionalizes its support by earmarking P200M from its own endowment fund for CODE-NGO, the annual income proceeds of which will be granted by PEF to CODE-NGO to support its operations and the capacity development program of its member networks.

The five-year support of Christian Aid to our community-based DRRM and humanitarian initiatives positioned our members as DRRM coordination hubs in 10 regions in the country and established CODE-NGO’s credibility in these areas of work. It also led to CODE-NGO’s convening of the Philippine Partnership for Emergency Response and Resilience (PPERR) and its active involvement in the Balik-Lokal Movement to continue its campaign for locally-led humanitarian response. We have also actively represented the UN Civil Society Assembly (UNCSA) in the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) and shared about the important role of local NGOs in humanitarian response to several disasters that hit the country this year.

Together with NASSA-JP/Caritas Philippines and Humanitarian Response Consortium, we also registered the Shared Aid Fund for Emergency Response (SAFER) as an independent foundation, our proof of concept for a pooled fund and local fundraising to support community-based humanitarian actions.

Our long-time membership in international networks gave more opportunities for our members to directly participate in international events, such as Norman Jiao (AF) in the Civicus’ training on Transformative Scenario Planning, Benedict Balderrama (PHILSSA) in the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) Assembly, Rey Laguda (PBSP) in World Bank’s Regional CSO Forum, Patricia Sarenas (MINCODE) and Roselle Rasay (CODE-NGO) in the Asia Development Alliance (ADA)’s Ulaanbaataar Development Forum, Deanie Lyn Ocampo (CODE-NGO) in ICVA’s learning exchange among national platforms, and Germaine de Runa (PHILDRRA) in ADA’s Glo-cal Advocacy Leadership Academy 2019.

2) Harvesting this year the results of relationship-building efforts of past years

An example of this is the Center for Humanitarian Learning and Innovations (CHLI) which is CODE-NGO’s joint venture with UK-based Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA). As part of its localization initiative, HLA partnered with CODE-NGO to continue to make its learning solutions available in the Philippines as it closed its center in the country in 2018. CODE-NGO’s partnership with HLA was a result of an earlier connection made by PBSP, which led to the Blended Learning Approach to Strengthening (BLAST) DRRM Project that developed five online modules on community-based DRRM and conducted training in blended learning mode.

Another example is our partnership with the Commission on Audit (COA) on its Citizen Participatory Audit (CPA) Program. Our original partnership idea with COA in 2016 was to conduct a CPA of shelter rehabilitation projects in selected cities affected by Typhoons Sendong and Haiyan. While this did not push through, we finally pursued the partnership when COA invited CODE-NGO in the CPA of 158 school buildings in Metro Manila. The DepEd appreciated the results and recommendations of the CPA, particularly the participation of CSOs in the audit. Our members PHILSSA, PHILDHRRA, NCSD and AF and partner community leaders from AKKMA joined the said CPA.

3) New partners as sources of our innovation and fresh perspectives

This year, we signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the MVGS Law Services for pro-bono corporate legal services for CODE-NGO and its members. MVGS Law supported us in a dialogue we led with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other human rights organizations on the new guidelines for CSOs on Mandatory Disclosure Form (MDF) and declaration of beneficial owners. While the MDF aimed to protect non-profits from money laundering and terrorism financing, we raised concerns about the unclear process of risk assessment and the threat that our disclosures might be used by the security sector for red-tagging. These provisions were eventually clarified in the final guidelines released by SEC.

Creative advertising and public relations professionals also facilitated the Advocacy and Communications Workshops for the programs team and advocacy working groups. Business consultancy and training firm Technopoly Inc. facilitated business planning workshops for CHLI as well as for our Board to explore new and sustainable ways of offering our services and resourcing our work. CENVISNET member, the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc., organized for our Commission on Institution and Capacity Building (CICB) an engaging and inspiring process that led to the development of a 3-year Capacity Development Plan for our MNs. The Asia Foundation also started to introduce their Development Entrepreneurship concept to us, an entrepreneurial way of delivering our program services or campaigning for our advocacies.