The Peacemakers: Christians turn Moro rebels’ kids into peaceniks

Pilot project

The barangay is known as the entry and exit point to the city of insurgent groups and criminal gangs coming from the Rio Grande. “This is where you see the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Johnny Balawag of the Department of Education. The latter characters outnumber the good.

It is pretty much like Rio Hondo in Zamboanga City, a Christian enclave that the Army razed during a 10-day standoff with Moro rebels in September 2013. Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons, or IDPs, in the lexicon of UN protocols, are in squalid evacuation centers in Zamboanga. International humanitarian organizations help provide assistance to IDPs, whose continuing presence in the encampments are regarded as an embarrassment and a blot on the record of the government that claims to be progressive.

Described as a “pilot project,” the peace program at the Cotabato school took off after the teachers attended a series of seminars sponsored by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in 2006.

“The idea is to dismantle the culture of war,” said Mergie Benedicto, 42, the school principal, a Seventh Day Adventist with a degree in elementary education from Notre Dame University in Cotabato.

Eye-opener

The UNDP initiative was an “eye-opener,” said teacher Apolonia Ponce Usman, 51. “It shone a light on the issue. That’s where we understood the voice of the youth. Slowly, we embraced this and learned how we can move them away from this culture of violence.”

In practical terms, it means telling kids to shun toy guns and avoid spats that often draw parents to shouting matches and at times to a tragic rido. Soldiers are invited to help parents clean up the premises at the start of the school year and exchange seeds for toy guns. The idea is to let the pupils know that soldiers are not enemies that their rebel parents talk about at home.

It’s not only getting rid of war freaks that preoccupies the teachers, it’s also preparing the children to deal with the perennial flooding that bedevils the barangay with the periodic swelling of Rio Grande during the monsoon season.