The Manobo have lived in these highlands for generations, their lives woven into the forests, rivers, and mountain ranges that encircle Bacusanon. For Datu Guinto, the land is not a resource to be measured. It is a relationship to be honored. "Nature is our true wealth," he told the team, his tone carrying neither performance nor plea. "The forests, rivers, and mountains sustain us. They've been cared for by our ancestors for generations, and it is our duty to protect them."

He spoke plainly about what his community was up against: deforestation gnawing at not only the environment but at the traditions and stories embedded within it. The Manobo word for nature, kinaiyahan, holds a sense of something living and reciprocal, not passive. Datu Guinto understood deforestation as a kind of severance from that relationship. And yet there was nothing defeated in how he spoke. He described how the community had been planting trees and adapting their farming to work with the land rather than against it. These were not new ideas born from crisis. They were old practices being reclaimed.

At the time, the team was operating as SD Projects, still young in its mission and finding its footing. Visits like this one were not field observations in any detached sense. They were lessons. Datu Guinto did not present a list of needs. He opened his home and shared his world. That distinction mattered enormously.

It was the difference between aid and accompaniment, and it reframed everything. "It reminded us why we existed," the team would later reflect, "to work with communities like Datu Guinto's, not as saviors but as partners, learning and building together." That realization took root. It would go on to shape how programs were designed, how relationships were built, and how success would eventually be defined.

When the team left Bacusanon a few days later, the phrase "Nature is our wealth" came with them. Over time it moved from a remembered quote into something closer to a compass, informing how Nayon listens before it acts, why solutions are integrated with local practice rather than imposed on it, and how the organization measures progress not only in cookstoves installed or biodigesters commissioned, but in the quality of trust between people and programs.

Datu Guinto's words hold because they are not sentimental. They are a practical ethic. True wealth, he was saying, is what you protect and share, not what you extract. That reframing sits at the heart of Nayon's work today, and it traces back to a morning in Bacusanon where a chief welcomed a group of strangers and taught them something they hadn't known they needed to learn.