Solidarity of Matigsalug People for the Development of the Ancestral Land

Here's a letter from the coordinator of Solidarity of Matigsalug People for the Development of the Ancestral Land. Inserted in between paragraphs are pictures of the community and its residents. Should you wish to help the organization in any way, please feel free to email pensofhopeindavao@gmail.com or contact Mark Brazil at kramlizarb@gmail.com. 

--------------------------------

Maepya ne aldew! (Good day!)

Educating the young people has been considered as one of the effective means to empower communities, thus I am writing to invite you in this campaign we are initiating. In a collaboration with SOLED KI, we are inviting you to join in an initiative that seeks to support indigenous school children from the Matigsalug Tribe in the outskirts of Davao-Bukidnon boundary, where we operate our satellite community schools.

Among the vulnerable groups, the indigenous children are the most marginalized thus intervention must be directed towards them. Among the Matugsalug children going to school doesn’t come easy as they have to walk seven (7) kilometers and even cross the dangerous Salug river. Such condition left them with lesser chances of surviving even primary education. As intervention, we have started to organize a support initiative to provide assistance for school supplies for the community schools, school uniform and eventually, come up with a school dormitory in the barangay center to house the students coming from the far-flung area. This initiative is still on a birthing process, thus we can also start little by little until we will be able to actualize the dormitory building.

Now since that that the school year is about to start by June 2012, I am reiterating my invitation to join us in this advocacy. Any amount, in goods or in kind will be most welcome and we will be organizing a

day sometime soon to turn-over our support to the targeted beneficiary communities.

To give you glimpse of the aspiration of the Matigsalug community, in one of the community meetings we facilitated, the members- especially the women- have reiterated the following details related to the education program:

1. Students dormitory in the barangay center to house the students living in the far-flung areas.
2. Classrooms for the existing community schools. We have established 3 community 
schools within Brgy. Kalagangan (Simsimon, Anibong and Malengen). Malengen is the farthest, 6 hours away uphill, on foot.
3. School supplies such as papers and notebooks, pencils, cartolina, cardboards 
4. Educational materials like wooden letters and numbers, shapes etc.
5. Books for Pre-schoolers and Adult Learners
6. Sponsorship for the Student’s uniform (opting for traditional design)
7. Fund for Teacher’s training, access to training partners, or interested groups interested to facilitate training activity to Lumad Parateachers.
8. Special Project: Coming up with a book with traditional stories. Research and data gathering on the Matigsalug stories shall be conducted and commissioned, but with direct community participation.
9. Organizing the Young Adult Alternative Education Program. Twenty out-of-school youth are gathered to conduct farming activity in the morning while non-formal education classes will be conducted in the afternoon. Datu Jimboy commits to facilitate the program. A 40-hectare land is already allocated for the program which shall be used as demonstration farm. The program seeks to provide venue for livelihood and education development for the Matigsalug youth. The site will be at Sitio Malunasay, 30 minutes away from Sitio Simsimon. 
10. Establishment of Community Center that will house the community library, Ethnographic/Community Museum, Visitors Receiving and Ritual area, as well as the Peoples Organization’s Office.

Note: Lumber to be used in the construction of the classrooms and the community center shall be taken from a number of fallen trees due to swidden (kaingin) farming. This shall be related to the idea of Datu Jimboy to “give life to what has died” and serve as a testament and reminder to the community of the importance of valuing the environment.

Any assistance on any of the indentified need will be much appreciated. Your generosity is much appreciated and assurance is given that all your contributions will be directed to the rightful beneficiaries.

Sincerely,

Mark Brazil

POHD Shares Pencils To Lumondao Kids

POHD shared 35 dozens of pencils to kids in Lomundao through Ms April Labagala and her friends. Below is the letter we got from her. Inserted in between paragraphs are photos taken during their gift-giving activity last June 1, 2012.

They will have another distribution on June 23. If you want to share your blessings, please contact Liyah Rivera through her Facebook account.

--------------------------------

To all my friends,

I would like to share with you my experience when I visited three puroks in Lomundao. I visited the place to see for myself the situation of the children there. I didn’t know that my co-teacher brought with her all the school supplies that I gave her from my classroom. I wasn’t able to bring new ones. The road going to their place was terrible, it was my first to travel on a very rough road, good thing we had a Good Samaritan who really drove us to the area. When we arrived there, slowly the children started to gather in the gym. When they saw us, the children greeted us with their very warm smiles. I felt joy in my heart when I saw that they were so excited. We started with a prayer led by a parent. Her prayer was so touching. The people there were very thankful of our presence and the supplies that we brought for them.

I saw the clothes of the children as shown in our pictures, they certainly needed decent clothes to wear, shoes and even slippers. It broke my heart to see children who were deprived of school materials and even food. We prepared parlor games for them and they enthusiastically participated. I hope we made that day memorable for them. We, the teachers of the Kinder Class in Matina Central, are planning to go back on the 1st of June because we still need to give more to the children. We only gave what was available in my classroom and some of those school supplies were donated by friends. Teacher Maricel will be assigned there starting in June and it is also her hometown so she knows the place and the people who can also help us while we are there.

I hope by sharing you this story, it will also touch your heart. You can share some of your blessings to these less fortunate children. Together, we can do something for them. This can be our way of giving back all the blessings that we received from God. We will accept any form of donations. For cash donations, we can buy school materials and we will show all the receipts here in FB or you can give us used school bags, shoes, slippers, toiletries, food, school materials, educational toys, books, tumblers, school supplies. You will see where your donations go and the children who received them because we will be taking pictures during the distribution when we go back to the place on June 1. I will post the pictures here in Facebook.

We will start gathering all your donations anytime in May so that we will be able to prepare and pack them because we are targeting 400 children and hopefully each of them will be able to receive school bags. We have wholesale prices in school supplies so that we will be able to provide all the children.

Rest assured that your donations will all be given to the children. I hope that you will respond to this project.

God will surely return all the blessings that you will be sharing a hundredfold. Thank you so much and God bless us all.

April G. Labagala