Duyog Marawi Peace Nurseries

The dream is to defeat terrorism by nurturing seeds of peace and hope among the children of their victims.

When the ISIS-Maute attacked Marawi, the Muslim Meranaw of one million people were traumatized. The most at risk are preschool children. Their bodies are undernourished, their minds are deprived, and their hearts dwell in fear. That is the seedbed of more poverty and violence.

The Duyog Marawi Peace Nurseries offer seedbeds of a better future. For six months, we will nurture their bodies by supplemental feeding; their minds by access to mobile technology to learn literacy skills, and their hearts by engaging in stories of peace and inclusion that promote emotional wellness.

These will equip this generation with essential skills to integrate with regular school children in the future and lead normal lives. The potential of this innovation can be shared to the millions of displaced Muslim children around the world. 

Duyog Marawi asserts that the worst damage brought by conflicts are not cities in ruins but children’s future becoming uncertain.  We also assert that the strongest force to defeat terrorism is when these children grow up peaceful and hopeful.

By 2017, of the 68.5 million people forcibly displaced due to conflicts, 52% of them are children.  In 2015 alone, 16 million babies were born in conflict areas.  This figure includes Syria, Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa, and Mindanao, where an estimated 100,000 preschool children are in conflict zones.

For young children, the conflict zone is the only world they know of – where their basic needs are not addressed and their rights are not protected.  They have highest rates in diseases among the age categories.  The trauma severely affect their ability to learn and their emotional wellness. The Sustainable Development Goal of “Leave No One Behind’ is undermined.

Studies show that the first six years of a child’s life lay the foundation for health, learning, and behavior.  With weak foundation, the future is bleak, and thus a fertile ground for more poverty and violence. There is a need to fill these gaps, and the need is urgent – here and around the world.

Duyog Marawi is serving Muslim communities called Meranaw (local dialect for  people of the lake), the indigenous people who live around Lake Lanao, the second largest lake in the Philippines.

These communities have survived four decades of rebellion that ended with a peace accord called Bangsamoro Organic Law ratified in a plebiscite early 2019. The ISIS forces, aiming to establish a Caliphate here, attacked the capital city of Marawi and outside communities in 2017 and left the city in ruins. It is the poorest province of the country with a poverty incidence of 71.9%. 

We engage in an integrated rehabilitation, social cohesion, and peacebuilding project in 126 most vulnerable conflict zones around the lake, serving a total of 76,000 families for the past two years. The preschool children comprise an estimated 10% of the total affected population. The day care centers are closed, and no one is taking care of the needs of the preschool kids except for the occasion psychosocial interventions. Duyog Marawi has piloted 5 Peace Nurseries/Child Friendly Spaces, and with plans to expand to other areas.

Drawn from best practices around the world modified to fit local realities,  Duyog Marawi Peace Nurseries are seedbeds of health, healing of trauma, and hope for the next generation.

It is a tech-driven, culture-appropriate, faith-sensitive, rights-based, community-managed Early Childhood Education for children in conflict zones innovated in partnership with the affected communities, local experts, and lessons learned from humanitarian best practices. It is a six-month program where learners, 4-5 years old, gather together in a child-friendly and artistic space for two hours a day, five days a week under the guidance of their mothers and caregivers.

Mothers will be capacitated so that they can take turns in handling some of the activities. In such a way, we integrate the Meranaw belief that the whole community raises each child.

The course is composed of six essential elements:

• Feed their imagination – this includes an artistic “play and learn space” to be co-created by their mothers and caregivers and to contain their cultural colors and the symbol of Sarimanok – a bird that brings peace and prosperity according to their ancestors. Traditional wisdom figures will be asked to volunteer for storytelling sessions about the peace traditions of their culture before the rebellion happened.
• Feed their bodies – is a 75-week supplemental feeding program using locally produced nutrition packages called Sarimanok Meals patterned after VitaMeal and Manna Packs but with local ingredients. It also includes Hygiene Promotion, Deworming, and Vaccination in partnership with the Rural Health Unit (RHU) of the government
• Feed their minds – is an early literacy component that uses mobile apps instead of textbooks to fast-track learning and for early familiarization with the use of mobile technology.
• Feed their hearts - is a psychosocial support and emotional wellness module using play therapy – actual and digital. This track makes use of existing digital play therapy developed by child psychologists as well as games developed by Duyog Marawi.
• Feed their souls – is a weekly session on Islamic education focusing on the genuine values of Islam.
• Feed their piggy bank – is weekly session on EcoBricks making where they will be taught to gather plastic garbage and transform them into EcoBricks which Duyog Marawi will buy for its construction projects. Their “income” will be put into their personal savings or piggy banks.

The approach is learned-centered, thus modules will be adjusted to the mood and preferences of the children. 

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The Duyog Marawi Peace Nurseries is a joint project of two departments - the Peacebuilding and Social Cohesion Unit (PBS) and the Recovery and Rehabilitation Unit (RRU). It is supported by two groups - the Finance Department and the MEAL or Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning Units.

PBS - Fulltime staff - 16

RRU - Fulltime staff   14

Finance  Fulltime Staff 3

MEAL Fulltime Staff 4

Total 37

Duyog Marawi is a testimony that the victims of the war are the best persons to help themselves recover from the trauma and create a generation of peace-promoting people.

The only youth-led, interfaith, local organization in the region, the solutions team is a combination of licensed social workers, teachers, community organizers, and development practitioners. 

They are from the community and they are very familiar with their cultural and faith traditions. They survive the war and thus they have the empathy to accompany the suffering of others. 

They have big dreams, thus they are creative and innovative in providing solutions to their community problems.

1. The De LaSalle Schools Philippines (DLSP), one of Philippines largest nationwide network of De LaSalle Schools is our partner in the development and implementation of another innovative approach in education called Schools of Hope. Targeted for adult learners, the Schools of Hope combines literacy, numeracy, peace education, and vocational training for rural youth and unemployed women. They develop the integration of mobile technology in alternative learning systems.

2. The Philippine Business for Social Progress, the country's biggest network of CSR or corporate social responsibilities and corporate foundations, is our partner in Duyog Marawi Bazaar, a marketing innovation to promote local weaving and craftsmanship in the Lanao Region. 

Key Resources - indigenous knowledge, digital learning resources, learn and play construction kits, supplemental feeding supplies

Key Stakeholders - local community mothers, local volunteers, Department of Education

Key Activities - early childhood education, supplemental feeding, peace promotion, savings mobilization for children

Type of Intervention - early childhood integrated education and development

Channels - local conflict zones

Segments - children in conflict zones

Value proposition - recovery from trauma and healthy minds and bodies among children in preschool age lays the foundation to end violence and poverty

Impact measures - number of children who have moved up from malnourished status, number of children who can read and write, number of children who have savings, number of children who can recite the Peace Covenant for Children

Customer value proposition - promote community-based early childhood education in conflict zones

Cost structure - learning materials, staff, learn and play spaces construction materials

Revenue - local donations, sponsorships for each child

Three financial sustainability tracks are integrated into this Peace Nurseries concept: integration into the local government annual budget, adoption as a priority program of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, and the sustained support of school children in the PACEM Peace Nursery Fund.

1. Each local village has an annual development plan where their internal revenue allocation (share of taxes from the national government) is appropriated to priority services. A success pilot run will convince elected government officials to include Peace Nurseries in their annual budgets.

2. the newly formed BARMM which governs Muslim Mindanao, the locus of this pilot innovation, are open to best practices. When properly documented and piloted, Peace Nurseries can be enacted into law and thus receive government funding.

3. The PACEM Peace Nursery Fund is anchored on two principles: children helping other children, and the peace education of the next generation of Muslims will benefit the next generation of Christian. To generate this campaign requires proof of its potential. 

1. To be part of an international group that advocates innovation to solve universal challenges in local realities. That is a great value to our project. We are small, but we think global and we think big. We need a bigger group to validate, confirm, challenge, or improve our ideas, a group that harnesses the experiences and expertise of others.

2. To gain the opportunity to contribute to the global knowledge bank specifically in the field of children in conflict zones and those at risk from violent extremism and terrorism. We believe it is our duty to share the innovations we have started as the only non-Arab country where ISIS forces attempted to establish a caliphate. 

3. To gain access to grants and expertise to help us develop the integration of IT in the learning process as well as in the development of child-friendly peace education modules.

We don't have a specific organization in mind but we aim to link with any organization that develop best practices in early childhood education in conflict zones and any organization that looks at early childhood education as an opportunity to improve child health and nutrition, and the formation of peace values and life skills at a very young age.

We are also looking for financial experts to help us develop materials to make our PACEM Peace Nursery Fund attractive to children around the world.

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