Negros Occidental 3rd district Rep. Jose Francisco Benitez and former Kabankalan City Vice Mayor Raul Rivera were among those elected as National Board of Trustees of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), which is considered the oldest primary non-government organization in the country.

In a statement, PRRM said that Benitez and Rivera, who also served as a provincial board member of Negros Occidental, were among those elected into the 15-person PRRM National Board of Trustees, and will serve a three year term.

PRMM, which held its 72nd anniversary and National Council meeting on July 18, was founded in 1952 by a group of renowned Filipino intellectuals, public officials and industrialists led by Dean Conrado Benitez, grandfather of siblings Rep. Benitez and Bacolod City Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez.

A statement from the PRRM said that it has been in the forefront of efforts to uplift the rural poor and to build sustainable development in various areas of the country. In Negros Occidental, PRRM is focused on sustainable agri-fisheries development, social and environmental reforms, and good participatory governance.

Aside from its rural partners of small farmers and peasant groups, PRRM-NEGROS promotes Democratic and Sustainable Fisheries (DSF) and was the local implementing NGO partner of the NGOs for Fisheries Reform (NFR) for its previous Fish Right and current INSPIRE programs, both of which were USAID-funded projects.

PRRM-Negros currently partners with the Panay-Negros-Guimaras Crab Fishers Alliance (PANEG-CA), which has more than 100 member people’s organizations, spread in the three provinces of Negros Occidental, Iloilo, and Guimaras, possibly the largest small fishers network in the Visayas.*