The Call to the Filipino Diaspora: Local Development Through Transnational Practices

Answering the Cry of the Poor (ANCOP) is an NGO operating in Canada and the Philippines. ANCOP, under the Catholic lay organization Couples for Christ (CFC) have a community development program where it builds villages for the poor and offers free housing to selected beneficiaries. It accomplishes this by drawing on donations from, among other sources, the Filipino-Canadian diaspora, utilizing its transnational networks to redistribute wealth. This raises the question of what type of local development is being constructed through such transnational philanthropy? I argue that ANCOPs practices can be situated as a governmentalizing process that creates and enforces specific religious and middle-class subjectivities through the structures of power that are enacted by its leadership, members and benefactors. Additionally, this research highlights the role of transnational religious organizations in contributing to development in the Philippines and in creating transnational economic practices beyond individual remittances whose impact is already well known.