New Tactics in the Philippines: A Follow-up to the Asia Workshop

Forum-Asia and Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) co-hosted a New Tactics follow-up workshop in the Philippines to introduce tools shared at the Asia Regional Training Workshop (August 2005). The workshop took place on May 20-21, 2006.

Participants sharing a fun moment together during the New Tactics Workshop

The workshop gathered 38 participants from Metro-Manila, Visayas and Mindanao. The participants were primarily from grassroots, sectoral and activist organizations with which TFDP and its regional units are working. The New Tactics tools that were presented and used during the workshop included: Tactical Mapping tool, Vision Gallery Exercise, the Myth/Reality/Value tool, the Spectrum of Allies and the Tactics timeline/campaign plan.

At the start, participants were asked to share campaign experiences and tactics. Six participants shared the following campaign experiences:

• a campaign against demolitions
• a successful campaign in the city of Iloilo to reduce electric rates
• an ongoing campaign for a 125 peso across the board wage hike
• a peace /anti-war campaign in the wake of the invasion of Iraq
• an ongoing campaign against the Arroyo government’s charter change initiative
• a women’s campaign against the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the USA.

Participants were divided into two groups and applied the use of tactical mapping and spectrum of allies tools in planning a campaign on the 125 peso across the board nationwide wage hike by the labor sector, and the campaign to oppose the Arroyo government’s charter change initiative. Each group presented their results for discussion in a plenary session.

Participants proposed additional tools and some adaptations to New Tactics tools. They recommended that tools for examining organizational capacity and campaign context be added (such as a SWOT–strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis), as well as tools for campaign monitoring and evaluation.

Participants found the tools very useful. Wilson Fortaleza, a chairperson of Sanlakas, recommended the introduction of these tools in the campaign trainings of Sanlakas and its local affiliates.

View the Spectrum of Allies output from the group that focused on the wage increase campaign.

[Forum-Asia]
[TFDP]
[Online resource on SWOT analysis tool]