‘We started with nothing’

We started with nothing. And then God has given us – everything!” That’s how Ruth Callanta, renowned in the development community as a visionary thinker and leader in the anti-poverty movement, describes the phenomenal growth of the Center for Community Transformation (CCT), which observes its 27th year of eventful, pro-God and pro-people existence today.

CCT began mainly as a micro-financing company with a handful of people, whose proceeds went to helping impoverished individuals and families. It now has become a nationwide organization serving over 600,000 beneficiaries in various modes of long-term support through diverse clusters of 16 ministries – and counting.

CCT’s success – “God-ordained” Ruth quickly adds – has also attracted well-meaning leaders in every community to join the CCT Board, several ministry boards, and the regional advisory boards. These leaders are one in saying that they have been looking for a “meaningful, sustainable, Christian response to the widespread poverty in every place” and they have found one in CCT.

Truly, CCT has proven to be the organization which can fully harness their “preferential option for the poor,” Ruth’s favorite phrase, and which fulfills their desire to “love the least of the brethren,” as commanded by Jesus Christ. So, CCT’s singular calling to find solution to society’s struggle with poverty is now shared by over 200 CCT corporate members who are leaders in the country.

“We didn’t have any social or economic theory in mind on how to lick poverty,” Ruth recalls. “All we had is a deep sense of God’s love for every human being made in His image – and that surely includes the poor, the marginalized farmers and fisherfolk and even our indigenous people,” she explains, mistyeyed. “We daily search the Scriptures for every approach we need to use, and we came upon principles that have guided us all these years.”

Ruth is not saying it, but she has been well-trained in the field of giving expression to some organizations’ purpose to do something with burgeoning poverty. She was executive director of the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), which is the business community’s way of adopting and implementing anti-poverty programs addressed to free people from the clutches of poverty. PBSP corporate members allocate a percentage of their net income for PBSP’s socioeconomic programs.

We can say that Ruth has grappled with the realities of poverty in the Philippines, and we are right. We can also say that Ruth, schooled at the University of the Philippines and seasoned in confronting social injustice in the streets, had seen the harshness of poverty and an unjust society – which explains her passion to seek solutions.

And yet we can also say that Ruth, trained in Asia’s best graduate business management school, the Asian Institute of Management, has what it takes to address our country’s persistent problem.

“There is method in her passion for the poor,” says my good friend Dr. Dante Velasco who has volunteered to join CCT, to lead governance and leadership studies for the fast-growing organization. Stick to Biblical formula Ruth does – and look how God rewarded her unshakeable faith. The organization which began with “nothing” now has P2 billion in assets by which to serve humanity. The assets are made up of P1.2 billion in loanable cash for its thousands of CCT Credit Cooperative borrowers, and P800 million in land and property assets devoted for training and community centers around the country.

CCT now operates the Tagaytay Retreat and Training Center (TRTC), a beautiful 6.5 hectares of sprawling land line with flowers and houses, meant to provide “oasis” to Christian leaders to recharge themselves.

In Negros Occidental, CCT operates a 2.6 ha. training center called Manapla Community Center overlooking the sea. Down in El Nido, Palawan, a training center will soon be up. A sprawling training center, jutting out of a forest in Malungon in Sarangani Province, is the Malungon Training Center, all of 73 hectares – a training facility for volunteers and staff serving the needs of Mindanao.

Lupang Pangako, a 23-hectare community in Barangay Kalikid in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, is the newfound home of former street dwellers, exconvicts and their families. “Lupang Pangako,” the name the dwellers themselves coined, is the direct translation of the “Promised Land” that God’s people looked forward to in the Scriptures.

After reviewing everything which God has done through CCT, what can Ruth say? She says she would rather quote a very inspiring passage from Joshua 24:13: “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build, and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant.”

How does one transform a community, a nation? For 27 years, Ruth Callanta and her fellow leaders and workers have found something. The love of Christ is the “transformer” seen and felt in every changed life, sensed in the smile of every child rescued from the streets, and every family reunited with shelter on their heads and more.

With 16 ministries, close to 1,500 staff members, and 10,000 CCT volunteers around the country, moved by the mission to implement the “organized Christian response to society’s social ills – we can truly look forward to truly transform a nation – one person at a time.

* * * FROM ANOTHER FRONT: Want to adopt a reefbud and start saving the seas?

A very concerned citizen, Marivi Dizon, is inviting people to join the campaign to save, or create “reefbuds.”

“Writes Marivi: “The inevitable has come – we’ve had to invent new technology artificial reefs to ‘rekindle,’ as the Filipino co-inventor of ‘Reefbuds’ puts it, “a marine ecosystem which has disappeared or has been severely damaged.”

“If you think about the impact of dead corals on our life, the facts are staggering. I’ve been struck by the connectivity of these facts:

• coral reef structures are buffers protecting our coastlines

• when reefs are damaged this natural barrier against floods to our coastal communities are gone

• coral reefs act as nurseries and habitats to marine species • marine ecosystems help with nutrient recycling • they provide us our food supply • they provide us our livelihood • the fishing industry depends on reefs because fish spawn there

• So, an unhealthy ecosystem means a breakdown in our biodiversity.”

“And the species mostly at fault of the damage, which is happening rapidly within decades, is US – the human species, says Marivi. “Isn’t this justification enough for us to move to do something about it?” “You can really help. Help bring coral reefs back to life.” When you “adopt a reefbud” your nameplate, says Marivi, will be on it! Go to https://reefbufs.wixsite.com/reefbudsglobal. Then write Marivi at dizon.reefbuds214@yahoo.com Email: dominitorrevillas@gmail.com