Thirteen municipalities in Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga Sibugay provinces have availed of various projects aimed to promote peace and development.

The projects were funded by Payapa at MasaganangPamayana, or Pamana, an initiative of the national government through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, implemented using the community-driven development (CDD) strategy of the DSWD’s Kalahi-CIDSS project.

Through Pamana, poor communities were able to identify their most urgent needs, and decided on which projects would best address these needs, taking into consideration their effect on improving peace and hastening development in their areas. As in Kalahi-CIDSS’ CDD approach, community residents themselves also implemented their own projects through capacity-building trainings on finance, procurement and engineering, among others.

“Okay kaayu ang proseso, (ang) pamaagi sa KC-PAMANA. Kay ang iyahang proseso gikan sa community. Dili magbuot ang gobyerno unsa proyekto ang ipatukud dili pareho sa una.” (The process of KC-PAMANA is very good. Because the decision will really come from the community and that the government does not decide on what project to build unlike before.) BSPMC Chairperson of La Libertad, TungawanMary Ann Limbag shares.

Some common projects include tribal halls, where people from different traditions and cultures could come together to thresh out common problems facing them; some communities chose to construct streetlights to avert crimes especially during nighttime for the residents’ security; meanwhile, some others chose to build day care centers to address the lack of such in the communities. But for Tungawan, ZSP, a drainage canal was prioritized to urgently address a more relevant detrimental issue then.

Together with Mary Ann was Florita Arellano, a resident as well of Barangay Libertad, Tungawan. Florita was one of those who lobbied for the drainage canal project for Libertad during the municipal inter-barangay forum, since the community then was faced with an awful number of dengue cases in their barangay brought about by the poor open water drainage. “Taas ang kaso sa dengue katung wala pa ni (referring to drainage canal.) Kay hugaw man kaayu. Karun, sa tabang sa kalahi ug pamana, dili na magreklamo ang mga tawu kay hugaw, ug wala na gyud kaso sa dengue karun. Pasalamat gyud mi sa kalahi ug pamana. Maskin kapuy, enjoy man pud mi. So ok ra.” (The cases of dengue here was a bit high when there was still no drainage canal. Now, with the help of KC and PAMANA, people no longer complain of the wastes and the dengue cases had also decreased. We are really thankful of KC and PAMANA, it may have been very tiring but we enjoyed the entire experience.) Florita said.

Pamana provides seed funds amounting to Php300,000 per barangay in the identified municipalities for the peace and development projects that were identified through consultations with the barangay residents. The Pamana project will run for three cycles, or years in each of the identified municipalities.

In 2014, 10 municipalities are covered by PAMANA in addition to the 524 Sub-projects completed since 2011 in region IX.