The Obo Manobo Tribal Council, in partnership with the Corporate Social Responsibility Division of Energy Development Corporation, invited the PBCI-CFP IncluDev Team to conduct a series of training seminars in Inclusive Development, Financial Management, Sustainable Agricultural Enterprise, Quality Coffee Processing, and Coffee Marketing. The participants in this 6-month program are key farmers, forestry specialists, and traditional tribal leaders.
This initiative was a result of an on-going dialogue between the Manobo Apao Descendants Ancestral Domain of Mt. Apo (MADADMA), the Inclusive Development Team of PeaceBuilders Community & Coffee for Peace (PBCI-CFP IncluDev Team), and the Corporate Social Responsibility Division of Energy Development Corporation (EDC). The seminar, in itself, is designed to develop a functioning field implementing team among its participants. The MADADMA traditional leaders participating in the training program include Datu Federico Sia, Datu Romeo Andot, Datu Eduardo Umpan, and Datu Teodoro Bangcas. The PBCI-CFP IncluDev Team is composed of Lakan Sumulong, Sihaya Ansibod, and Beverly Costales. The EDC staff members involved in this project include Jonathan Abel, Jubylyn Mae Caniedo, Jelandonie Tormis, and Rich Paul Cosio.
The central focus of this program is relationship-building through active listening and transparent socio-cultural engagement. We started the process through an Obo Manobo indigenous ritual. We offered to the Creator this Inclusive Development partnership as an expression of worship. In that ritual, we solemnly submitted ourselves to love the people, to respect-protect the creation, and to practice justice, peace, and reconciliation.
During the first day of the seminar, the Obo Manobo worldview, their value system, their customary laws, and their indigenous perspectives on life, peace, and development surfaced. As we — the PBCI-CFP Inclusive Development team and the Energy Development Corporation team — seek and listen to the Obo Manobo indigenous soul as the root-resource of this entrepreneurial initiative, there is so much hope that we’ll see a sustainable and regenerative economic-ecological future among their communities around Mt. Apo.
This training seminar is a segment of a 6-month program of an Inclusive Development partnership between the Obo Manobo Tribal Council, the Energy Development Corporation, and the PBCI-CFP IncluDev Team.
