For three decades now nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines have been at the forefront of various efforts to improve the marginalized and oppressed. These efforts are part of a history that NGO workers today claim as their precious legacy.

The history might even be older if stretched to include the charity and welfare agencies of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Philippine Tuberculosis Society and the Community Chest, and the relief agencies that went to work immediately after the Second World War.

These were followed in the 1950s by the rural development and cooperative movements. The 1960s saw the emergence of various family, corporate and scientific foundations. The 1970s and 1980s spawned the social development agencies that threw themselves into the political ferment of the times, culminating in their active role in the EDSA “people power” revolution.

Today, the work of voluntary and nongovernment agencies continues to bear fruit in the various people’s organizations built up through the years and across many sectors. Organizations of farmers, fisherfolk, the urban poor and other marginalized groups have grown in number and strength. Increasingly, they are able to challenge prevailing injustices on the community and workplace levels while participating, albeit critically, in the shaping of public policies that affect their lives.

While helping to bring relief and progress to the lives of the poor, the work of NGOs also has paved the way for creating alternative grassroots structures that promote sustainable development, and a more equitable distribution of power and resources across class, culture and gender. So rich has been the experience that the Philippine NGO community has been hailed by some of its international counterparts as among the most progressive in the world.