‘Library-on-wheels’ boosts peace education in Cotabato schools

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Local sectors are extensively supporting the operation of the Cotabato provincial government’s library-on-wheels, for them a big help in furthering religious and cultural solidarity, via "peace education," among pupils in elementary schools in the province.

Cotabato, one of the four provinces in Region 12, has 17 towns and 40 barangays in its capital, Kidapawan City, home to mixed Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities.

A project of the office of the now second-term Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, the library-on-wheels, a van-type truck that has thousands of elementary subject books, electronic learning gadgets and visual aid devices, has been operating in the province for more than two years now.

Provincial officials dispatched the mobile library to the Antipas Central Elementary School (ACES) in the highland Antipas town on Friday, October 2, and allowed its pupils to read the books and magazines on peace education neatly piled inside.

The team overseeing the Cotabato provincial government’s mobile library had earlier facilitated similar sessions for elementary pupils in more than a dozen towns in the province in the past 12 months.

Two Army officials, Major Gen. Alvin Luzon, commander of the 10th Infantry Division based in Mawab in Davao de Oro province, and his counterpart in the 6th Infantry Division in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte, Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, separately told reporters on Saturday that the peace education goals of the Cotabato provincial government’s mobile library augur well with their peacebuilding programs in the province.

“That project, in a way, complements the peacebuilding programs of the local government units, the police and the military in Cotabato province,” Bunayog said.

The 10th and 6th IDs have units in Cotabato province, recently declared as totally free from the presence of the New People's Army by officials of both divisions, the Police Regional Office 12 and members of the multi-sector provincial peace and order council led by Taliño-Mendoza, who as governor, is also chairperson of the Regional Development Council 12.

The province was cleared of NPA presence via multi-sector peacebuilding interventions assisted by local executives and school officials in different towns where members of the now-defunct rebel group once operated with impunity.

Ian Tenorio, the principal of ACES in the town center of Antipas, said on Saturday that they are grateful to the office of Taliño-Mendoza for last Friday’s engagement of the provincial government's mobile library team with their pupils.

“We are hoping that they shall do it again soon,” Tenorio said.