Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC)

The MBRLC was founded in 1971 by Harold Ray Watson, who was living with his family at the training center in Kinuskusan, Bansalan, in the southern Philippines. With money from the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (USA) and a private United States (US) donor, Watson purchased ten hectares of underdeveloped and degraded land to serve as a demonstration site for small farmers. When Dr. Warlito Laquihon joined the staff as Associate Director in 1977, he proposed Research, Extension, Development, Education, Evangelism, and Mission (REDEEM) as the future focus of the MBRLC. In the late 1970s, the MBRLC launched a number of programs, including an agricultural extension program, Plan for Extension, Development, And Leadership (PEDAL), and the first of many BOOST programs. In 1978 Watson, Laquihon, and Rodrigo Calixtro developed the SALT technique and began to offer formal SALT trainings at the Center in 1980. By the mid- 1980s the SALT trainings were attracting more than 1,000 people a year. Since then, the MBRLC has added nine more hectares to its demonstration site in Bansalan, initiated several satellite projects throughout the southern Philippines, increased its staff, expanded its training programs, and established connections with international organizations working for sustainable development in other Asian countries.