[ manilastandardtoday.com ] May 6, 2009
By Ceferino Acosta III
THE Couples for Christ International Council has relinquished control of the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation Inc. to enable the pro-poor housing advocate to expand its work as a non-religious group.
Couples for Christ executive director Joe Tale announced the decision, explaining that CFC and Gawad Kalinga have become two distinct approaches to implementing a pro-poor ministry. Tale’s statement was posted on the Web site of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines.
Since Couples for Christ will cease to have institutional authority over Gawad Kalinga, Tale will cease to be the GK board chairman and Melo Villaroman Jr. will step down as GK president. CFC-IC members will also resign from the 12-man Gawad Kalinga board. Of the five remaining GK board members, four are CFC members; Ateneo de Manila University president Fr. Ben Nebres, S.J. is the fifth member, Tale said.
In 2007, the CFC International suffered a widely-publicized division that threatened the existence of the movement which has been in the Philippines in 1981 and now has more than one million members in 160 countries.
CFC co-founder Frank Padilla had formed the Restoration Movement, also called the Easter Group, according to a letter circulated in the United States by coordinators of the CFC.
Just a few weeks after the supposed split, GK executive director Antonio Meloto acknowledged that there was a rift between CFC and GK that they had unsuccessfully tried to keep under wraps.
Meloto also rejected criticisms that his group was accepting help even from firms that were deemed unacceptable to Catholic organizations, saying that his group does not discriminate against firms as long as these were willing to help the GK.
“The reason that some think that GK is taking a different direction is because we may be disrupting conventions. We are working more, talking less,” Meloto had been quoted in reports as saying then.
Tale clarified that the decision of CFC to let go of GK as one of its ministry is not tantamount to the group’s neglect of its pro-poor ministry.
Meloto said that the consequences of the decision and “the spirit of the proposal was for greater empowerment of both CFC and GK, to remove confusion and to restore relationships.”
“We believe that the work with the poor should not suffer because of our differences. We believe that allowing GK to operate independently of the authority of the IC is the right step to take for CFC, GK and the poor,” he said.
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