Marawi City— Maranao women should sustain a greater role in all recovery efforts for this war-torn city, even as they draw inspiration from the Gender and Development experience in Maguindanao’s areas of conflict, officials and residents said.
Lanao Sur Gov. Bejoria Soraya Alonto-Adiong and her son, Vice Gov. Mamintal “Bombit” Adiong Jr., invited Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu to a day-long forum Monday to share the neighboring province’s GAD experience amid a string of armed conflicts there.
The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process has recognized success in Maguindanao’s gender programs, including its “Go Negosyo” for mothers, anti-trafficking in persons, stress debriefing services, and other forms of psychosocial intervention to abused women and children.
The considerable success in Maguindanao’s gender-based programs and projects had prompted OPAPP to recommend to the Lanao Sur GAD unit to review the Maguindanao experience as a model for gender-based social recovery programs. Earlier, the OPAPP cited Mangudadatu as GAD champion.
Mangudadatu said he acknowledged that the Maranao people have had great leaders, including one of the country’s first woman provincial governors—Princess Tarhata Alonto-Lucman. During her time in the ‘70’s, Alonto-Lucman’s only known counterparts in the north were Governor Aurora Crisologo of Ilocos Sur and Imelda Romualdez-Marcos of Metro Manila.
The Maguindanao governor said his province’s intervention for Maranao families’ collective recovery from the Marawi armed conflict is “now focused on the sustainability of rehabilitation efforts in terms of helping restore the socio-economic activities and the venues of microeconomics in the trading endeavor of many Maranao families with the distinct tradition of excellence marking their handicrafts.”
Adiong acknowledged the assistance extended by Mangudadatu even in the height of the locals’ need for support to relief operations for families displaced from Marawi’s center of commerce, which had been occupied by armed extremists last year.
Residents said the Maguindanao governor brought in truckloads of bangus and tilapia fish from Buluan Lake in Maguindanao for displaced families, as well as schoolbag packages for children.
A mother among participants said her group took interest on how GAD programs inspire women here among thousands of evacuees and the way they effectively addressed humanitarian concerns in Maguindanao in times of massive displacement caused by armed conflict.
Mangudadatu brought in complete sets of computerized T-Shirt printing and mug souvenir-marking machines for women to help promote, sustain, and expand the advocacy for the economic and social recovery of all families displaced by the Marawi siege.
The machines were presented by IT experts and crash course trainers on their use and maintenance before thousands of Maranao women who converged at the Provincial Gymnasium here.
The OPAPP had previously awarded Mangudadatu a cash prize of P8 million in 2014 for championing GAD advocacy in terms of resource allocation and practical utilization on viable programs and projects for women and children. Maguindanao GAD programs include training on food preparation, Inaul loom weaving, and micro trading for mothers.
Eeman Aljani, chief-of-staff of the Provincial Governor’s Office, said observers often rate the status of Muslim women in material terms that they are entitled to only one share for every two shares their male counterparts get from hereditary rights. But materially also, males are obliged to spend resources on family welfare and defend their rights, which are not made compulsory to female members.
Emotionally, Islam teaches the child (female or male) to love the mother thrice as much the love for the father—which perpetually overtakes the males’ material advantage, in terms of affection along human generation, Aljani said.
Aljani said from the Maguindanao governor’s own pocket, he added P 5 million to the P 8 million OPAPP GAD prize check for the construction of a five-story Women and Children Center in the heart of Buluan.
The WCC caters to cottage industry production, trading and learning of the Inaul fabric home-weaving, and as the drop-in facility that provides stress debriefing and other psychosocial intervention services for abused women and children.
Cases of physical abuse on women and children may be rare in Muslim areas (as it can cause bloody clan feud). But few abused individuals find the reformatory atmosphere and friendly shelter in WCC, which will soon house a local unit of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office to provide medical assistance to indigent patients in charity wards.