International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, also known as IIRR is a non-profit organization that helps empower rural communities by making them self-sufficient. By offering programs across health, education, environment, and livelihood, its goal is to have rural communities take charge of their own success. The organization has delivered programs to more than 40 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and directly impacted the lives of over 19 million people as of 2019.
Headquarters
The Y.C. James Yen Center occupies an area of 54 hectares along the boundary of the municipality of Silang and the City of Dasmariñas in the province of Cavite, Philippines. It includes a number of classrooms, function halls, apartments, and hostels.
Additionally, the organization has country offices in Cambodia, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda, United States, and Zimbabwe.
Origins of the Rural Reconstruction Movement
The origins of the movement can be traced back to China in the 1930s, during the Great Depression in China. Individuals living in rural China, many of them landless, were particularly hurt by the global economic downturn. The declining agricultural and rural economy caused severe social unrest in the countryside. Intellectuals and reformers such as Liang Shuming, Y.C. James Yen, Tao Xingzhi, Lu Zuofu and Peng Yuting turned their attention to the countryside and initiated the first wave of the Rural Reconstruction movement in order to experiment with various rural development models. Liang Shuming and James Yen were prominent figures in the movement.
Liang Shuming emphasized the merger of traditional Chinese beliefs and values with new agricultural and technological advances. He funded the Research Institute of Rural Reconstruction in Zouping county of Shandong province to disseminate his theories of development. The organization trained thousands of rural educators in remote and previously under-served rural communities. It also helped to introduce new agricultural technology and hybridized plants to these communities.
James Yen, unlike Liang, received a Western education at Hong Kong and later Yale University and worked for a time in France. He believed that education was the primary tool in empowering the poor. He, therefore, supported educational reforms in the Chinese countryside, where most people lived. Yen summarized China's rural problems as peasants' ignorance, poverty, illness and selfishness. The remedy to these problems thus relied on mass education with respect to culture, livelihood, health care and civic-mindedness. Yen and his colleagues committed to reduce the illiteracy rate in the countryside and teach farmers science and new technologies. They also edited and published a farmers' newspaper and established a farmers' radio and performance group to promote local literature, art and theater.
Both Liang and Yen's projects were halted by the Sino-Japanese War of 1937. Yen would take his educational movement abroad to other developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In 1960 Yen founded the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction in the Philippines.
The Yen Center
The Yen Center —named after IIRR's founder, Dr. Y.C. James Yen— is an eco-friendly training facility situated approximately from Manila in the Province of Cavite, Philippines. The campus is nestled in a wide range of fauna and flora and is the home of the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction. The facility offers seminars, training, retreats, workshops, conferences, team building, and other learning events.
Accommodation
The Yen Center offers low-carbon accommodations in a rural setting with green landscapes designed to cater to group-specific requirements. Furnished bungalow-type cottages with green sustainable operating practices are also available for family and small group events.
Facilities and Services
The Yen Center has three fully equipped function halls and several break-out rooms and reflection huts. The Yen Center also offers an array of dishes from international menus to local favorites and their own recipes are even produced using campus garden produce.
Eco-friendly Environment
The campus-style environment is well suited for outdoor activities such as camping, bird-watching and nature trekking. Other sites on the campus include learning centers that focus on IIRR's work and projects.