Yesterday, Ka Carling of LAKAS and PBAZ called me on the celfone: “The ceremony granting us the CADT to the 15,000 hectares will happen in the Botolan town plaza on January 14. Please come.”

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go, since I have a previous engagement. But I and the rest of ELF will be there not only in spirit, but in other ways.

It’s one thing to get the title to their ancestral domain, which significantly includes Mt. Pinatubo. It’s another thing to be ale to develop it to benefit the Aeta communities while conserving biodiversity and protecting the forests and watersheds.

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The Aeta leader-graduates and educators who have formed PBAZ – Paaralang Bayan ng Ayta sa Zambales, are the main strategic partners of ELF.

ELF met with some Aeta leaders a few years after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 displaced the Aeta communities from their homeland and dispersed them to different resettlement areas. Since then, they have struggled to sustain their livelihood, and their culture and identity. Integral to this struggle is their effort to have their rights recognized to their ancestral domain.

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November 24, 2009, I was in Sultan Kudarat to speak at a literacy conference organized by the Literacy Coordinating Council (LCC), the Education Network (E-Net), the provincial government, and Congressman Pax Mangudadatu.

For a while, we thought the conference would not push through, since the day before, a horrific and gruesome massacre happened at the neighboring province of Maguindanao, just one hour away.

Despite his grief over the killing of members of his clan, and his urgent efforts to restrain his clan members from launching an armed retaliation, Congressman Pax still found time and energy to address our conference.

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Last September 26, typhoon Ondoy caused unprecedented flooding in MetroManila. The raging flood waters entered the ground floor of ELF’s administrative office, and drowned not just our paper files, but even those in the desktops and laptops that were submerged for hours. The same fate was suffered by E-Net Philippines, with whom we have shared the office for over a year.

It was Saturday, and no one was at the office. We took comfort that no life was in danger.

But after the flood receded, we decided that it is time to move elsewhere, to higher ground.

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When ELF decided on a strategic partnership with PBAZ, Paaralang Bayan ng mga Ayta sa Zambales, I proposed that we name our program “Developing Aeta LEADERS.”

I explained that LEADERS is an acronym for Leaders, Educators, Advocates, for Development, Empowerment, Resilience, and Sustainability.

All the key words are part of the standard development NGO vocabulary. The only word that is relatively different is “resilience.” And yet, it may be one of the most central concept for the Aetas.

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