Sweeter victory for Kapitan Nono Eliot of

Visayan Village
Oct 28-nov 3, 2010
For people-empowerment-oriented Barangay Kapitan Ronald Nono Eliot nothing is sweeter than
being elected for second time by a trusting people despite heavy odds and black propaganda levelled
against him during the campaign period.

Barangay Visayan Village, Tagum Kapitan Ronald Nono Eliot

In the last barangay polls, a mud was thrown at him by his rival who is a perennial and always a loser
candidate, that hes always in the sabungan (cockpit) when theres no Saturdays and Sundays to me
since I started serving Visayan Village.
Hes no gambler nor one of the cockfighting aficionados. Hes a punong barangay every public
development worker or community organizer in the idealist civil society can no longer target to
mainstream or advocate, for you name almost any objective and expected outcome along sustainable
development advocacies, Kapitan Nono has it already in-place right in his own barangay. His
organizing of sectors and people as partners in barangay development process knows no end.
People empowerment is the heart of our service. Even if we have the resources, and without people
participation and cooperation barangay development is meaningless, he says.
For years, he has been pushing integrated and comprehensive development in Visayan Village in
networking, collaboration and couterparting approaches dovetailing with local and national
government agencies and tapping the bayanihan and volunterism of the barangay people, always with
the end view of realizing people empowerment as a bedrock of genuine barangay development.
Under still limited barangay resources, he infused, for instance, a barangay funding counterpart to the
fund of city government to a people-identified drainage project

which people in a purok did through

a bayanihan. Theres that collective effort and common ownership and responsibility of the project.

In allocating the budget for human development from the P11.1-millon income of the barangay,
Kapitan Nono spreads this across the 72 puroks through the purok organizations and sectors he
organized like the purok councils of women under a barangay federation umbrella, senior citizens,
overseas Filipino workers (OFW) beneficiaries, differently-abled persons and even the gays udner
their Viviga (Visayan Village Gays Association), among others, as partners of barangay development
and components in making the barangay presence felt in sectoral ways by its 36,000 population.
By his fresh mandate, hes set to continue what he started and achieve more stellar feats for the
barangay people like launching more intensively infrastructure projects, continuing improvement
works for day care centers, scholarship programs for high school students, skills trainings with Tesda,
barangay employment service and job fairs, barangay computerization and databanking, computer
and other gadget donations and internet connection to the 3 schools in the barangay, support to the
Alternative Learning School (ALS), medical missions, kasalan ng barangay with free food

in barangay

gym, Balanghay Festival, solid waste management, nutrition program, non-doleout financial assistance
for microlending, bigasan store, 1 Product, 1 Purok which has now 43 puroks organized to come up
one product for each as livelihood activity of the council of women.
For Kapitan Nono, serving the barangay is tiresome. But at the end of each day, ones lost energy is
replenished by the thought of having served fellowmen right with the grassroots in the barangay.
(Rural Urban News/Cha Monforte)