The 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

The INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION, or IIRR as it is known to its intimates, is unique among government and non-government agencies attempting to promote development in the Third World. The concepts shaping its efforts had their genesis nearly 70 years ago in France during World War I, where Dr. Y.C.James Yen and associates were teaching illiterate Chinese laborers—sent by the Chinese government to help in the war—to read and write. From this beginning grew the Mass Education Movement (MEM) that was remaking rural life on the north China plain until its leadership was driven out by the Japanese military in 1937. After World War II the United States Congress lent new impetus to the movement, funding the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction that, using adaptations of MEM concepts, led eventually to the transformation of rural Taiwan.

IIRR, incorporated in the U.S. in 1960 as an international rather than strictly Chinese movement, conducted a worldwide search for a physical site. In 1961 it selected a 52 hectare site in Silang, Cavite, Philippines, for its training and research headquarters. Recruitment of the individuals who were to build the INSTITUTE began then, and included Dr.Juan M. Flavier, who became president in 1978 and manages a staff now numbering 160. From the outset IIRR did not attempt to direct development. Rather it sought to serve the Rural Reconstruction Movement (RRM) already in existence in the Philippines, Colombia md Guatemala, and later developed in Thailand, Ghana and India. Workers from these lands have been trained at Silang to return home better equipped to help their neighbors.

IIRR has suffered many setbacks but has achieved much. Soon after the INSTITUTE began its work its approach of small scale, one-on-one rural development went out of fashion; massive schemes to reshape the landscape and rural life commanded both national and international financial support. This change in priorities left the INSTITUTE in the shadows, with many of its hard-earned lessons ignored.

Nevertheless IIRR clung to its precepts: going to the peasants, living among them, planning and working with them, starting with what they knew and had, learning from them and learning by doing. In time this approach proved its worth as decision makers, often reluctantly, recognized that the means as well as the benefactor of development must be the individual.

International training began in Silang in 1965 and in 1971 participants—social workers, planners, donors and missionaries—came from 11 countries and 18 government and non-government agencies to the first training course to be given to non-RRM personnel. Lectures and discussions were matched by field practice in the villages—from building water-sealed toilets to helping farmers with upland rice variety test plots, vegetable and herb gardens and cooperatives.

By 1978 training had become a major aspect of the INSTITUTE. World Vision, Christian Children's Fund, UNICEF, UN Development Fund, FAO, the Peace Corps and USAID sponsored trainees, as did Save the Children Fund, World Concern, Redd Barna and Foster Parents Plan. Alumni of the full-curriculum courses now total 800.

For the benefit of rural foreign workers who find travel to the Philippines costly, IIRR has instituted training courses abroad. In Kenya three training courses have been given jointly with Voluntary Agencies Development Assistance for 81 participants. In Indonesia similar joint training courses have been presented.

The exchange among rural workers from around the world is generating within IIRR new understanding of the stubborn problems that hobble progress, and some options for overcoming them. The INSTITUTE has yet to become a repository of farming expertise, however, and matching social concern with hardheaded and productive profit on the land remains a near-universal conundrum for development agencies. But by training workers and farmers to organize around their common concerns and thus build a more attractive future in the world's villages, IIRR, with its accumulated insight, has become an international asset.

In electing the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF RURAL RECONSTRUCTION to receive the 1986 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes its training of agrarian development workers from four continents, enabling them to share experience and ideas for more effective progress.