Lakan Sumulong and Joseph ‘Ka Boyet’ Ongkiko co-facilitated this Capiz PAR Leaders’ Training. Tala Bautista, who took this photo, was the Event Coordinator.
23-27 May 2017. The 241 graduates of Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) Training Program in Capiz have organized themselves as founding members of the PAR movement in this province. The graduates selected 11 of their fellow PAR advocates to be the officers of the new Capiz PAR Community.
They are:
Jino Lumbo, President
Rolly Payas, Vice President
Cecilia Corcino, Secretary
Gerald Zarayno, Treasurer
Gloria Bedes, Auditor
Erinee Grace Contreras, Public Relations Officer
Britta Lumbo, Member
Bonifacio Odiaman, Member
Nestor Ordanel, Member
Sulpicio Ortencio, Member
Danny Villasor, Member
These people completed the intensive 5-day Advanced PAR Leadership Training Course.
For the past 10 months, Tala Bautista have been working among pastors, church leaders, and community leaders in establishing a Peace and Reconciliation community in the Province of Capiz. It started earlier this year when PeaceBuilders Community, Inc. (PBCI) was invited to join a consortium between the Philippine Relief and Development Services (PhilRaDS) and International Care Ministries (ICM) to serve the people in Panay starting with a program called Capacity-Building for Humanitarian Initiatives in Capiz (CHIC). PBCI was asked to focus on providing a theological-ethical framework for these initiatives. It is in this logistical context that PBCI is able to reach out to these community leaders in Capiz.
Project CHIC is enabling more than 200 pastors to establish a network of faith-motivated leaders and local churches acting as first responders to a disaster impacting Capiz. The consortium is focusing on the poorest LGUs and most vulnerable barangays, especially coastal towns and isolated upland communities. The responses will be rapid, compassionate, culturally appropriate, using indigenous strategies, people, assets, and other locally available resources. The goal of the training for disaster preparedness is to create local capacity to mitigate a disaster’s mitigate on loss or damage to life and property. The vision is to create a local model that could be replicated in Iloilo and scaled-up nationwide.
In 23-26 November 2016, the Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) Community in the Province of Capiz was born! Fifty-six (56) community leaders – pastors, college counsellors, school teachers, entrepreneurs, civil society representatives, and various non-government organization personnel – participated in this three-day training and workshop dubbed as Peace Theology and Disaster Response.
PBCI prays, and plans, that this humble beginnings in the Province of Capiz would spark the PAR movement in Western Visayas and would significantly contribute to the PAR Vision 2020.
