KRIZ CRUZADO’S PAR STUDENTS PREPARE FOR DISASTERS

Last week, in the Davao City offices of PeaceBuilders Community, Inc. (PBCI), Kriz Cruzado and her assistant were revising field reports, sorting and transcribing receipts (“liquidating funds” in the Filipino English usage), and tying up the hundred loose ends of a nearly two year PBCI operation in the Visayan island region – a project which …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/08/kriz-cruzados-par-students-prepare-for-disasters/

PBCI FINALIZES PAR-DRN ORGANIZING IN EASTERN SAMAR

This month we mark the completion of a nearly two year PeaceBuilders Community Inc. operation designed to enhance the disaster response capabilities of the Church in the Visayan Islands of the central Philippines. From small beginnings, this program really took off thanks to the enthusiastic participation of the Visayan pastors and the financial backing of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/07/pbci-finalizes-par-drn-organizing-in-eastern-samar/

BARISTA CATHY OLITAO SPREADS THE FAIR TRADE MESSAGE

Longtime Coffee For Peace (CFP) barista Catherine Moreno Olitao wants the Philippines’ small farmers to hold onto their land. She sees how the modern, globalized economy squeezes the life out of traditional family based agriculture, pressuring poor rural folk to cash out and move to the city. Catherine’s farmer relatives live under this strain, and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/07/catherine-moreno-olitao-learning-and-teaching-at-coffee-for-peace/

RASSIERE RAMOS FINISHES COLLEGE THROUGH CFP SCHOLARSHIP

At the close of 2007, young Rassiere Ramos was near to despairing. Unable to pay his college tuition, he had recently been forced to drop out. Rassiere’s family had always been poor. He and his three siblings all longed to earn college degrees and find professional employment so as to help their parents. But the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/07/peacebuilder-profile-rassiere-ramos/

MORO AUTONOMY: A MINDANAOAN CHRISTIAN’S THIRTY-YEAR ADVOCACY

Young Jun Aparece pricked up his ears when Bobby Alonto began to tune the guitar. In the Muslim dormitory, on Mindanao State University’s main campus, Alonto and his brothers were about to launch into a chorus lauding their Moro people’s age-old, ongoing struggle for self-rule. It was the early 1980s, and nearly two decades of dictator Ferdinand …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/06/moro-autonomy-a-mindanaoan-christians-thirty-year-advocacy/

JUN APARECE: HARD LESSONS OF THE PURGE

During the final years of the Martial Law era in the Philippines, massive dissatisfaction with President Marcos’s brutal dictatorship prompted thousands of idealistic young Filipinos to align themselves with the Philippines’ various rebel fronts. Most joined up with the leftist revolutionaries of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA), and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/06/hard-lessons-of-the-purge/

JUN APARECE: ACTIVIST, MISSIONARY, AGITATOR, AND PEACEBUILDER

For the last seven years, Mindanaoan acitivist Jun Aparece has given great service to PeaceBuilders Community, Inc. as a partner and consultant. To our shared tasks of grassroots organizing, rallying Mindanaoan communities for anti-war demonstrations, and broadcasting the cries of war-weary Mindanaoan civilians to their countrymen throughout the Philippines and to lawmakers in Manila, Aparece …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/06/jun-aparece-activist-missionary-agitator-and-peacebuilder/

PBCI VOLUNTEER ASSASSINATED; FIVE NEW PAR MONITORS COMMISSIONED

For more than two decades, an indigenous southern Philippine tribe, the Dulangan Manobo of Sultan Kudarat Province, have reportedly been harassed, intimidated, and forced to struggle for the right to live and to practice their livelihoods within their own ancestral territory. Since 1992, when government contracts placed much of the Dulangan Manobo territory under the control of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/05/one-pbci-volunteer-slain-five-new-par-monitors-commissioned/

KALINAW YOUTH MOVEMENT, PEACE THEOLOGY, AND THE EVANGELICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The character of a nation’s youth can never be underestimated when judging its health and efficacy. The same can be said of any movement, whether it be for peace, rights, politics, a religion, or even a sports team. This is the basis for our optimism with the Kalinaw Youth Movement based in Valencia City in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/05/kalinaw-youth-movement-peace-theology-and-the-evangelical-consciousness/

CMU STARTS UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIATION

  Peacebuilders Community, Inc. was invited by Central Mindanao University (CMU) as consultant for Proposal Writing for Peace Process last April 28-29, 2015. The said activity was participated by selected professors who are members of Mt. Kalayo Institute for Social Enterprise Growth (MKESEG). CMU decided to have this kind of workshop because they believed that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/04/cmu-starts-university-center-for-peace-and-reconciliation/

PBCI PARTNER PASTOR MANNY’S BRICKMAKING MINISTRY (PART 2 OF 2)

The mighty Pulangi River of Bukidnon Province is in trouble. Year by year, as Bukidnon’s deforestation continues, each rainy season sluices exposed soil into the Pulangi, so that today the river is wider, slower, and shallower than ever before. In the glare of the summer sun, the Pulangi’s fish perish by thousands in the super-heated …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/04/pbci-partner-pastor-mannys-brickmaking-ministry-part-2-of-2/

MATT EPP VISITS COFFEE FOR PEACE

  The last Juno Awards, which took place in Winnipeg, Canada in March 2014, were the scene of a prolific encounter: that of Matt Epp and Willard Metzger. It seems strange that Canadian singer-songwriter Matt Epp, born in a Mennonite family, should meet Willard Metzger, executive director of Mennonite Church Canada (MCC), in a big …

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Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2015/03/matt-epp-visits-coffee-for-peace/

OUR GLOBAL PEACE COMMUNITY

We are sent by Mennonite Church Canada Witness in partnership with our international community.