Launching of Loop in the Philippines: Enabling Conversations in the Digital Shift

More than a hundred representatives and partners in the international non-governmental organizations, local government and national government agencies, civil society organizations including the national and local non-governmental organizations and its networks, faith-based organizations, people and community-based organizations, private sectors and media partners virtually convened for the official launching of Loop in the Philippines last July 7, 2021.

As part of strengthening partnerships and enabling proactive engagement, Loop ensures that its platform will be effectively translated and forwarded across all humanitarian, development, and government sectors in the Philippines as well as community partners to utilize. One of its key messages on the Philippines launching is to develop trust and accountability across all sectors by heightening partners’ knowledge on Loop’s purpose and goals.

The Loop Philippines technical team envisions delivering clear and compelling inputs about Loop for various aid providers to adapt Loop’s function in complementing their existing and new feedback and monitoring systems as well as for community partners to self-initiate feedback and obtain real-time responses. The launching also highlighted its influence towards improving and enhancing aid organizations’ services and how vulnerable and unreached communities are given the platform to be heard and meet their needs.

“Loop is there to give more power to local people who are affected by the crisis because they have a big role to play. By providing feedback mechanisms for anyone to access based on open data, ownership, and transparency, we are really making a change. The Philippines being the first country to launch, this will help us to launch Loop to more countries across the globe.” Said Geoffrey Kateregga, Loop Governing Board President.

In maximizing this influence, Loop was launched in the Philippines with considerations of the Grand Bargain commitments including localisation and participation revolution where important reforms in the humanitarian system were challenged. Thus, the use of and access to Loop as a digital platform was among the means identified that may help voices from the ground to be heard by service providers, government agencies and donors.

“Among the gaps identified during the localisation country-level dialogues were the needs to ensure that voices of the communities and recipients of aid are heard and the access to digital communication or the Loop digital platform in the country is an opportunity to fill-in this gap. We know that this platform will only become more useful and relevant if all service providers will be able to use and maximize this to improve our services. Loop is our concrete manifestation of our commitment to accountability to the affected population.” said Regina Antequisa, ECOWEB Executive Director as she kicked-off the event.

The Loop in the Philippines was developed in cooperation with a number of civil society actors that formed the initial members of Loop National Coordination Council (LNCC) composed currently by NAPC-VDC, DRRNet, CLEARNet, CDRN and ECOWEB. The LNCC, therefore, was delighted to launch Loop in the country with the goal to collaborate and register organizations and agencies as well as actors of aid in the Philippines on this safe space to encourage and coordinate feedback across all thematic areas. This way, representatives from all sectors provided their solidarity and expression of interest to make Loop happen in the Philippines.

In the launching, it was highlighted that Loop is the only feedback platform that is purely navigated by technology and does not require any staff on the ground to gather and consolidate feedback in various settings. To be able to scale a worldwide platform, it was finally launched to encourage minimal physical presence using Loop, a free and independent platform.

“The platform contributes to engaging, empowering and better understanding the needs and experiences of the people and individuals at scale. It breaks barriers for purposes of accessibility. It gives the right and opportunity to show and amplify their voices, to share learnings, lessons, good practices and articulation of contextual understanding, analysis and actions in going forward. For us civil society organizations, this is a really welcome space and opportunity for us to give our agenda forward.” said Loreine dela Cruz, Executive Director of Center for Disaster Preparedness and lead convener of DRRNet Philippines.

The world is experiencing an entire digital shift right now and it was mentioned that Loop is very timely and appropriate in introducing a digital means in feedbacking and monitoring as a system. It was also expressed that Loop can be a revolutionary tool that fosters and enables greater engagement with the citizenry. As it launches in the Philippines and ready for the pilot phase in the next quarter, the transfer of power from the top-down systems will be shifted towards more collaborative processes and humanitarian and development programs will be seen as more effective for the community partners because of the collected feedback from the platform.

“We are proud that our country is the first here in Southeast Asia, if not in Asia, to experience the development work by the Loop. As part of our mandate, to oversee the implementation of government programs and projects, this platform will definitely be significant in the fulfillment of our role and responsibilities as accountable council members. May we work closely and actively for the success of this endeavor.” said Ruperto “Ka-Uper’ Aleroza, National Anti-Poverty Commission Vice chair for the Basic Sectors

One of the activities during the launching is the call-to-action presentation facilitated by Retchel Sasing, Loop Philippines Program Manager and she encouraged the participants to register their organizations to the early access account of Loop and how this can be significant for organizations to utilize Loop as a parallel or complementary in all your assessments, monitoring and evaluation processes.

Meanwhile, Jose EG Michael Lacre, Loop Philippines Communications and Research Specialist and facilitator of the nationwide launching also announced the winner of the month-long nationwide T-Shirt design contest. The designs will be used for Loop’s engagements and to establish an identity and visibility in the country as part of the communications and information awareness component of the project. Three winners were selected by both Loop global and national selection committee. Out of 74 submitted designs, Arven Arceno of Iligan City won 1st place and will receive a cash prize with digital certificate alongside Luis Mañalac as 2nd placer and Froilan Salilin as 3rd placer.

Lastly, Joy Lascano, representative of LNNC closed the program and reflected about Loop’s effectiveness towards gearing up the feedback systems of all organizations in the Philippines.

“We take advantage of Loop for the benefit of the people we are serving. We hope that we will have dynamic participation for the platform.”

Most of the local partners during the launching have virtually expressed that they feel honored to be part of the launching and piloting of the platform in the next months. They underscored that the platform is an actual response to the calls for localization and connecting to the local actors of humanitarian and anti-poverty work. They said that it provides people with a simple and secure way to express themselves. Also, it provides a platform for Humanitarian and Development Aid providers to learn from, engage with, and respond to everyone in the open loop. They also highlighted that the platform ensures that processes are in place and communities that are affected by crises are constantly at the center of decision-making.

“This is basically why I am so excited about Loop to launch in the Philippines is the fact that Loop platform gives the opportunity to actually hear from the people, learn from the people, to be guided and lead by the people and this is how it should be from the start.” said Salama Bakhalah, Governing Board Member Treasurer.
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