Literacy program empowers Lanao Sur village in voting, trading, legal processes

MADAMBA, Philippines – In a village where there is neither school nor electricity, a women’s literacy program is empowering the community.

According to Jamilah Alodino, vice-president of the Mamisa People’s Organization, women in Barangay (village) Balagunun here believe that they can do better empowering their own people and community with the right tool— education, and being on track to development through participatory consultation.

Schools close to Madamba town center are just too far to walk to from Balagunun, a village overlooking Lake Lanao from its now concrete section of the lake’s Circumferential Road.

Children would have to go 15 kilometers downhill to the nearest primary school in Cabsaran— which explained a prevalent low literacy rate, Alodino said.  Only about 10 percent of the barangay’s close to 2,000 residents are able to read and write in English, and about that number in Arabic, according to Alodino.

There is not a single TV set in a household, but transistor radio gets getting signals from Marawi, Iligan, Ozamiz, Cagayan de Oro and Manila bring in information and media-generated influence, particularly, language (Visayan and Tagalog).

In late 2012, the village’s women, many of them mothers, participated in a social survey conducted by development facilitators and volunteers trying to determine what the residents collectively needed most to improve their lot.

Barangay assemblies followed, forming part of social preparations in poor villages in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which were mapped earlier for development intervention by the World Bank-supported ARMM Social Fund Project (ASFP).

Volunteers and local facilitators translated residents’ exchanges in assemblies into workable community proposals and were later integrated with the barangay development plan (BDP), said one of the facilitators.

With Learning and Livelihood Food Sufficiency (LLFS) program as the residents’ first choice for an all-women educational activity, the ARMM’s Department of Social Welfare and Development, in partnership with the ASFP, designed a three-month training program on basic literacy and numeracy, coupled with livelihood education on household entrepreneurship for female residents.

ARMM Governor Mujiv Hataman might soon hold community forums with Balagunun residents, but he assured the public that school building programs have been in place for more villages in the region, said lawyer Jamar Kulayan, ARMM’s education secretary.

Literacy also strengthens democracy in Balagunun. After graduating from the LLFS integrative module, 70-year old Pauli Misug is proud to say that in May 2013 and in the more recent barangay elections, she could already read and shade the ovals across the names of candidates of her choice on the ballot, without turning to a polling aide for help.

Suhaimin Cosain said more than writing her name, she and fellow LLFS graduates Diamond Diso and Fatima Malangkat have also learned basic numeracy, which they have been using in small trading activities to be able to add costs of stocks and expenses, and to subtract them from total market sales to determine a profit margin.

After graduation, the ASFP gave P1,000 to each of the 20 or so beneficiaries to help them collectively establish a capital build-up for their people’s organization, or to individually engage in any income-generating activity (IGA) of choice, said ASFP Manager Aba Kuaman.

Alodino said women’s participation in barangay assembly consultations (shura) added weight to the clamor for local development initiatives. Next to learning, the consistent “ijma” (consensus) is for the barangay to have a common solar drier and a multi-purpose shed for its agricultural products.

“We now have both, and also latrines, and a Day-Care Center, so our grandchildren will no longer experience what we had gone through, failing in our early quest for knowledge,” she said in mixed Tagalog and Visayan.

Baby Mindalano, an LLFS graduate, said the men among them helped as laborers in construction works. They also won the World Bank’s support, through the ASFP, for the concreting of a farm pathway, which used to be a muddy passageway to and from fruit-bearing marang trees in Balagunon’s sub-villages of Poblacion I and II, and Raya I and II. A concrete pathway is an easier access route for traders and local laborers in harvesting and truck-loading the seasonal marang fruits to roadside.

Ustadz Zainudin Abdulwahab, an Islamic lecturer who accompanied the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said numeracy would enable Moro women to learn further their specific rights under the Muslim Law on Inheritance, as prescribed in a Qur’an chapter called An-Nissa (The Women).

Abdulwahab said sufficient skills in numbers would protect Moro women and orphans from injustice.  Many of them do not know that there are more female sharers than males in their succession rights to ancestral properties, using specific fractions mentioned in Chapter 4 of the Muslim Holy Book, according to Abdulwahab.

“It is not true that women are ‘often prevented from participating in decision-making’ or that they are discriminated against, because of ‘multiple factors, including their gender and religion.’ Many, even among educated Moro women, do not seem to recall that we have had women leaders like (Lanao Sur) Governor Princess Tarhata Alonto-Lucman, Princess Tarhata Kiram of Sulu, and even the historic Sultana Nur’ul Azam, who reigned Sulu when most western nations were far from recognizing women’s right to suffrage. Still, we have many of them today in the political leadership. So how could they be prevented from participating in decision-making or be discriminated against?” Abdulwahab asked.

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