21
Mar

Helping the Needy

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MSU Main Campus - Marawi City > IPDM News > Helping the Needy
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Prof. Corazon M. Mangelen

Institute for Peace and Development in Mindanao, MSU Main Campus, Marawi

The Institute for Peace and Development in Mindanao in partnership with the Buklod Multi-Purpose Cooperative conduct an outreach program to help the needy. In its quest for Peace and Development and as an extension program, IPDM reached out to some groups like Buklod Multi-Purpose Cooperative for mutually productive and beneficial endeavors like gift giving and feeding programs for some orphanages in the area.

Buklod, a tagalog word for “to bind” or “to unite” started as an organization of Christian Women married to Muslims of the Philippines in the later part of 1994. At that time, there was a mushrooming of Cooperatives in the Lanao area and to help its members augment their limited resources, under the leadership of the then Dean of the College of Education and former Executive Director of IPDM, Dr Erlinda Ola-Casan with a few women, started the Buklod Multi-Purpose Cooperative (BMPC) on June 18, 1996 with only around P800 as its initial capitalization. At present it has grown as one of the large cooperatives of BARMM and the second largest cooperative in Lanao del Sur.

True to its vision of helping its members attain a better quality of life and forging a healthy, financially stable and sustainable environment/community, BMPC partnered with IPDM on its various peace initiatives and developmental programs. One of these was the Gift Giving of some 89 orphans who were given Slippers, School Supplies, Food Items like Rice, Canned Goods etc. last October 2022 and a Feeding Program for more than 55 children last January 2023. On both occasions volunteers of IPDM and BMPC worked as a Team for a successful and effective undertaking.

About the author

The institute for peace and development in Mindanao (IPDM) was created by the MSU Board of Regents during its 182nd Meeting on December 7, 2001. The institute assumed the functions of two defunct units: the Muslim Christian Center for Peace Studies and the Muslim Mindanao Development Institute. It is now the central coordinating unit for all existing peace and development programs of the campuses of the University. MSU was established on September 1, 1961 as one of the government responses to the so-called “Mindanao problem.” The problem includes a violent struggle of segments of the Filipino Muslim population to redress long-standing grievances and assert Muslim selfhood and identity in the face of real and imagined threats of cultural and spiritual assimilation by the majority Filipino Christian population. The University was mandated to accelerate the “integration” of the cultural communities in Mindanao into the mainstream body politic and to accelerate the development of its service areas through instruction, research, and extension. In the pursuit of these objectives, the University also seeks to infuse spiritual and moral values, national consciousness and solidarity, and mutual understanding among Filipinos, which are necessary for peaceful coexistence and sustainable development. IPDM was therefore, created with the expectation that it would contribute to the easing of tensions and the promotion of justice and peace between Filipino Muslims and Christian by expanding knowledge, improving understanding and heightening sensitivity in relations between the peoples of Mindanao in particular, and the Philippines in general.