Honeslty, sharing my ideas bout peace and development distrubed my pace of mind. On the other hand, it awakened me from my clam sleep of indifference. Somewhere in the corners of this Mindanaoan Island are cires for freedom and justice from the turmoil brought about by man made conflicts manifested through war struggles, extrajudicial killings, politically motivated violence similar to the barbaric Maguindanao massacre, extreme poverty, and deprivation. Although how difficult it is to achieve, I still believe that the advent of true peace and social transformation is a hand reach and the loving mother island of ours may deservingly called “The promise land”.

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As a child of our caring mother I am not here to criticize nor undermine the efforts initiated by our national and local government authorities together with NGO’s, local communities and conerned individuals. instead it would be futile to speak about my own views, experiences and dreams as an ordinary Cor Jesian.

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We ask ourselves, “How come the perpetrators were able to do that”? “Don’t they have their  own family?” Yet unknowingly we cursed our family members, neighbors, classmates and others when we have troubles with them. It is an irony that we desire for peace yet in our own little ways of living we violate it. Then we defend our selves by arguing that our deeds are less evil than others. we treat those who are different from us bittwerly as if they aren’ t Filipinos.

That I was trying to say is that we have to regard the fighters in each sides of the battlefield as entire humans and not merely part of the statistics. In this manner we can be able to address their yearnings. Livelihood and land tenure programs must be strengthened and widened for the surrendered rebels. let us support and advocate for community building like mat weaving, sustainable housing and cooperative loans.

Mindanao is wealthy with natural resouces, in fact, it is the food basket of the Philippines but to date we haven’t fully and properly utilized and enjoyed its gifts. Why? Since the failure or absence of peace hinders development. In which case the marginalized cary the burden of the load.

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The faith of my, and our Mindanao lies deep within us. Why keep looking for change? Wen we, ourselves are the change.