25 key Christian leaders—bishops, pastors, local government executives, business people, and civil society organization executives—participated in the First Part of the Peace and Reconciliation Leadership Development Program for Region 10. It was held last 4-5 August 2010 in Ozamiz City, Province of Misamis Occidental.
Region 10 is composed of five (5) provinces in Northern Mindanao—Bukidnon, Camiguin, Lanao del Norte, Misamis Occidental, and Misamis Oriental.
Each of the 25 leaders who participated in this program has agreed to develop a PAR Community in their respective provinces. The Provincial PAR Community, in turn, would develop PAR Teams in their own municipalities.
PAR Communities are groups of community leaders—church leaders, local government leaders, civil society organization leaders, academic leaders, business leaders, or any mix of these—
• who have expressed interest to have a working relationship with us as a consulting and training team focused on Peace and Reconciliation, or as a training arm of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches’ PAR Commission (PCEC-PARCom);
• who have made a commitment to embrace Peace Theology;
• who have invited us to teach them our PAR Seminar Series;
• who have a vision to work with us in developing a PAR Program needed in their area; and,
• who have organized themselves as a catalyst group to organize PAR Teams in their particular province.
PAR Teams are composed of local volunteers from various communities who are trained for 8 months to be an on-going, rapidly-mobilized teams who will implement their PAR Communities’ programs. The general objectives of PAR Teams are:
• to promote peace and reconciliation in our land by giving skilled, courageous support to communities experiencing various conflicts
• to inspire various parties-in-conflict to discard violence in favor of nonviolent action as a means of settling differences
• to provide various communities with first-hand information and resources for responding to situations of conflict, and to urge their active involvement
• to interpret a nonviolent perspective to the media and to our nation as a whole.
Bishop Genesis Udang of PCEC Mindanao leads the formation of PAR Commission in this region.
This session is the first part of a series of three sessions:
:: August 05, 2011 in Ozamiz City
:: September 02, 2011 in Cagayan de Oro City
:: October 11, 2011 in Malaybalay City.
