Barangay to board: the grassroots programme reaches forty towns
Sets, clocks and a trained arbiter in every town that asks — with the allocation for each region published in advance.
By Danilo Ocampo
The federation's grassroots programme has now placed equipment and a trained arbiter in forty municipalities, spread across all eighteen regions.
The mechanism is deliberately dull. Each region receives a published share of the development fund, calculated from its registered player count and its distance from the nearest rated event. A town applies, the regional director confirms a venue and a volunteer coordinator, and the equipment ships. The application, the decision and the amount are all posted.
That last part matters more than the equipment. Development money in Philippine sport has a long history of being announced and never traced. Publishing the allocation before it is spent, and the receipt afterwards, is the only way a member in a small town can see that their region's share reached their region.
Twelve of the forty towns held their first rated event this quarter. Ninety-one players from those events now appear on the national list who were not on any list at all a year ago.