STRENGTHENING INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP WITH THE OBO MANOBO TRIBE AND EDC

Together with the Corporate Social Responsibility Department of Energy Development Corporation (EDC), the PeaceBuilders Community Inc. and Coffee for Peace Inclusive Development (PBCI-CFP IncluDev) Team established a three-year program for the Obo Manobo in Kidapawan City. This year’s goal is to strengthen the coffee farming group in the Manobo Apao Descendants Ancestral Domain of Mt. Apo (MADADMA) community and develop their coffee farm management capacity.

The first month of training this year is focused on their organization’s identity, the basics of peacebuilding, community development, and an introduction to the coffee quality training.

Last 29-30 March 2021, the PBCI-CFP IncluDev team reaffirmed the partnership with the Obo Manobo tribe from the Ilomavis-Balabag areas on the foothills of Mt. Apo. Following public health and safety protocol, the training started with everyone getting their temperature checked, then filling up an information and attendance sheet. The training was led and opened by our Director of Field Operations, Sihaya Ansibod, as each participant introduced themselves.

Aldren Banal together with Sihaya Ansibod, shared the process of coffee from crop to cup. They demonstrated the anatomy of coffee, the factors that affects its growth, the ways to prepare a coffee nursery, and how to choose and transplant a seedling. This part of the training also included how being human is similar to a coffee tree and how the foundation and needs of both are comparable.

The Peace and Reconciliation (PAR) principles and practices were the foreground of the 2-day training. This started with Ama Lakan asking the participants to form groups and exchange views on how they define peace. Their answers revolved around the number of ways to attain peace in their personal lives to pour out to their community and also around the environment. According to them, when you have peace, what follows will be love, respect, understanding, honesty, unity, and a God-centered worldview. This emphasized PBCI’s transformational principles about harmony with the Creator (spiritual-ethical transformation), harmony with one’s being (psycho-social transformation), harmony with others (socio-political transformations), and harmony with the creation (economic-ecological transformation).

A lecture about the coffee value chain was also shared by Ama. This showed and inspired the participants that the dream doesn’t just stop at being farmers and they can also become farmer-entrepreneurs or ‘farmerpreneurs.’

Permanent link to this article: https://peacebuilderscommunity.org/2021/03/peace-and-coffee-inclusive-development-and-partnership-with-the-obo-manobo/

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