INTRODUCTION

The Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos (ERCOF), in coordination with the Mindanao Land Foundation (MLF), conducted the International Conference on

Identifying Effective Economic Linkages between Overseas Filipinos (OF) and the Rural Communities in the Philippines on April 10-12, 2002 at the Marco Polo Hotel, Davao City, Philippines.

The Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos (ERCOF) is a non-profit association based in Geneva, Switzerland, that works together or aims to form partnerships with organizations and Filipino individuals all over the world united by a common aim of advancing Philippine progress by advocating the sustainable development of rural economies. ERCOF seeks to achieve this goal by providing services that will facilitate the access of Overseas Filipinos (OFs) to the various means designed to maximize their economic resources to benefit their families and gear them towards more productive use in their own communities.  ERCOF advocates harnessing the development potential of migration, by providing services designed to foster the economic empowerment of Overseas Filipinos and enable them to contribute to the sustainable development of their own communities in the Philippines.

Mindanao Land Foundation (MLF) is a Davao based NGO that has pioneered on social housing since 1988.  Given that property acquisition counts as one of the most important and common use for migrants remittances, particularly migrants originating from rural poor communities, MLF, with its extensive experience in integrating livelihood, enterprise development and the application of an in-house Community-Based Monitoring system ® for health and nutrition to their urban poor housing program, becomes an important partner of ERCOF in the wholistic approach to the delivery of migrant services and especially in coming up with Mindanao specific models.  MLF has been specially chosen by the convenors because it is perceived that their expertise will complement the organizing and technical work on the substantive workshop issues being undertaken by ERCOF.

Prior to the conference, ERCOF prepared a working paper, which stipulates the background, rationale and conference issues.  It also included information about resource persons and participants, the conference organizers, the vision, mission and brief history of ERCOF, the program of MLF, and ideas on how to sustain the effort. The purpose of the conference was extensively discussed in the working paper, which was part of the handouts included in the conference kit. (See Annex 1 for the Working Paper).    The working paper was also published in the ERCOF website prior to the conference.

This process documentation report comprises four parts (4) parts namely: schedule, participants, summary of proceedings and evaluation results.   Details of each component are provided in succeeding paragraphs.