Festival Gives Recognition to PO Initiatives
and Best Practices
Date Posted: December 01, 2007 (Saturday)

Kidapawan City - With the hope that the Festival on Peoples Organizations (PO) Best Practices will set off a continuing search and identification of strategies that will help scale up people initiatives and leading to equitable development in post conflict communities, the Invisible Link - Cluster 1, an alliance of 10 Civil Society Organizations in South Central Mindanao decided to facilitate the 2nd PO Festival on December 4 - 6, 2007 at the Guadalupe Formation Center, Balindog, Kidapawan City.

The Invisible Link - Cluster1 bring this kind of initiative to the level of POs believing that people are the main actors and prime movers of development framework and strategies. This succeeding festival will be conducted to build the gains of the 1st PO Festival held on May 11 - 12 last year. Two hundred fifty (250) participants are expected to come, 180 will be key PO Leaders and the rest will be coming from NGOs, Government Officials, government line agencies, church, academe, funding agencies and the media.

The 1st day of the Festival will be devoted to the showcasing and presentation of PO best practices. The presentations are arranged into 9 categories: (1) Peace Building; (2)Youth & Children; (3) Economic & Livelihood; (4) Advocacy; (5) Women; (6) Environment; (7) Community Infrastructure; (8) Education; (9) Health. An open forum is scheduled on the 2nd day where POs, NGOs, Academe, Media, Funding Agencies, and Religious Institutions will be grouped together according to the 9 sub themes of the Festival. The festival is also expected to produce an overall unity statement(s). This will be drawn out of the output of each thematic forum.

Moreover, the PO Festival promises to give emphasis and due recognition to people initiatives and the successes derived from such experience that will boost people's morale and eliminate insecurities in pursuing development using available local resources and promote the value of sharing and interaction. The value of people to people exchanging ideas, experiences, success stories and failed ones will be promoted. As a result, positive contribution towards improvement of relationships and social cohesion of Mindanao's people is also foreseen.

It is hoped that this activity is a continuing process. The discovery and adoption of a reassuring set of positive values and behavior changes are the festival's emphasis. Among them are values of sharing and selfless giving. A positive behavioral change towards acceptance of these values will leave an impression of security that the people's capacity to pursue genuine peace and development is already there. (MinLand)