I was invited to the investiture of SEARCA Director Glenn B Gregorio on Monday, 28 October 2019, with PH Secretary of Education Leonor M Briones presiding. The proceedings and some papers have prompted me into seriously thinking about the singular role of SEARCA in the development of the 11 nations that it represents: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Timor Leste, and Vietnam.
SEARCA is the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Graduate Study & Research in Agriculture based at Los Baños. In the commemorative coffee-table book titled SEARCA's First Fifty Years and subtitled Pushing The Frontiers Of Agricultural And Rural Development (90 pages, 2016), the Center's mandate is stated thus:
To strengthen institutional capacities in agricultural and rural development in Southeast Asia through graduate education, short-term training, research, and knowledge exchange.
In those 21 words, I instinctively found SEARCA's unique role in the sustainable development of Southeast Asia even as it carries on graduate education, short-term trainings, researches:
Knowledge exchange.
Already, by its own declaration, SEARCA knows that it must engage in knowledge exchanges. Above right image is from Canterbury Church; religion is showing how science should behave![1] The knowledge exchanges are carried out via conferences, workshops, seminars, presentations and publications.
But there is one unfamiliar form of knowledge exchange that I am thinking of and that SEARCA should now explore even as it is part of its mandate of more than 50 years already:
A digital library dedicated to agricultural and rural development with contents coming from the written experiences of the SEARCA Eleven, from the results of SEARCA graduate studies and research, and the world at large.
I'm thinking of calling it iSEARCA, to signify information, innovation, initiative and any such intelligence regarding inclusive development that are made accessible anywhere via the Internet.
On page 87 of that SEARCA history book, describing the left image above, it says:
The Growth Monument, consisting of 11 stylized human figures linked internally on a square base, concretizes the synergy amidst the diversity of the SEAMEO member countries toward a more prosperous Southeast Asia.
My comment about the artwork above – it would have been perfect if the base were not square but round, to signify holism, because that would have signified oneness and, yet, at any time, any member country of SEARCA could take the initiative to move Southeast Asia in any field of graduate study or any area of research for agricultural and rural development.
SEARCA Director Gregorio has captured it in his SEARCA’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan submitted to the Governing Board for action:
The evolving context of agriculture, rural development and state of farmers as aligned with the global goals, mainly focus on the contribution of agriculture to hunger and malnutrition eradication, and to improving the (standards) of living of all in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner.
To improve the standards of living of Southeast Asians would require long and energetic exchanges of knowledge gained from studies, researches, experiences, and intuition.
Let the knowledge exchanges begin!@517
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