Bibingka Approach - Community Driven Institutional Change

I had the chance to catch-up and talk-story with Bob to get his thoughts and perspectives for this newsletter. In 2018, Bob moved to Hawai‘i Island to lead recovery and resilience efforts for the County’s Department of Planning after the 2018 eruption that devastated areas in Puna. Bob was recently appointed to the Deputy Director of the County of Hawai‘i’s Research and Development Department and continues to lead recovery and resiliency efforts with the Department of Planning. Congratulations, Bob!

Community Driven Institutional Change is one of three thematic areas in which HACBED focuses its work (the other two being Intergenerational Knowledge Evolution and ‘Āina and Food Justice). In doing this work, HACBED may serve as a third-party intermediary, facilitator, convener, networker, and/or planning consultant to institutions like governmental agencies and foundations to better engage their constituents. We support progressive and forward-thinking institutions to do better, create relevant programs and policies, and be more accountable to those they serve.

To paint a picture of Community Driven Institutional Change, here are some examples of the work HACBED is engaged in on Hawai‘i Island:

• Convening Resilience Efforts – reaching out to build the resilience of families and communities in Hawai‘i in response to COVID-19 and beyond, we create spaces to coordinate and align across efforts and connect with funders interested in supporting resilience efforts. 

• Affordable Hawai‘i for All (AHA) Fellows – building on the initial Housing Affordability Coalition work, we partner with Hawaiian Community Assets and Hawai‘i Appleseed to support individuals who have experienced houselessness or housing instability to build collective capacity on housing and affordability issues and implement projects to address those issues. 

• Ho‘owaiwai Network Hawai‘i Island – loose network of service providers, government, and businesses that will restart monthly meetings to better coordinate activities to support Hawai‘i Island families where they are at to build their genuine wealth, specifically focused on supporting the County's new Financial Empowerment Center.

• Hawai‘i Island Community Resilience Support Program (HI-CRSP) -- working across Hawai‘i County departments to better coordinate community engagement efforts, build related internal capacity, and explore how to integrate culture into government processes.

In describing HACBED’s work as an intermediary, Bob shared this idea of the “Bibingka” approach. Bibingka is a traditional Filipino coconut and rice dish that is cooked over a hot fire with hot coals from both above and below. The Bibingka approach is a methodology developed by health care workers in the Philippines who engaged people and communities in the development of health care programs, services, and policies. The Bibingka approach metaphorically, is about “working the middle,” the space between institutions and community, as a third-party intermediary organization.

A key theme that emerged in my talk-story with Bob was the opportunity for institutions to do things differently and to be more responsive and relevant to the community’s needs. He also shed light on the huge opportunity before us now with the historic amount of resources flowing into Hawai‘i County for resiliency and recovery efforts because of the 2018 eruption and the COVID pandemic. Our work would not be possible without the initiative of the government and funders to be more responsive and relevant to community issues. 

While HACBED has continued to grow and branch out into new fields of work over the last 15 years, our core remains the same: engaging community. HACBED’s founders were intentional when they named us the Hawai‘i Alliance for COMMUNITY-BASED Economic Development.