Latest News

Wednesday, 25 November 2020 03:52

Humility, Patience, Towards Community Development in the Camps

Written by
Rate this item
(0 votes)

October 26, 2020. It is when you are discussing a topic to the group of participants of the training you are facilitating and someone was just walking in the middle carrying a weapon, as if showing off power and disrespect.

Another scene is when a village leader did not welcome your team to the place, and whenever there is activity, he will send a group of armed men circling around the venue.

What would you do as the team leader of the project?

For Alimuddin Hadjinor, community development officer of the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA Inc.), such incident was part of the dynamics in camp communities that a development worker must know and understand. For him, patience is the best thing that one should possess to be able to manage such situation and realities.

“I and my team had let them do such disrespectful act and we just went on with our activity”, Hadjinor said.

He added that even they were ignored by the village leader despite the various attempts to pay respect to their office, his team would still go down for a while to greet and update them about the activity they are conducting for the day in the community.

“We just let them with that manner, no words from us. We only told them that our team is here in the village to conduct training as important component of the project that shall provide benefit of the people”, Hadjinor stated.

His team carried out all the activities in line with the project implementation and maintained harmonious relationship among the community members in the camp.

Hadjinor has been leading the team of Camp Project Support Team (CPST) in Camp Omar Ib’n Al-Khattab, who is the first team to complete the implementation of the socio-economic infrastructure (SEI) sub-project under the MTF-RDP/2 Stage 2 and officially turned over the facility to the rightful beneficiary in Brgy. Talibadok, Datu Hoffer, Maguindanao.

The agri-facility building with solar dryer and corn sheller sub-project shall benefit the farmers and the residents of the community who have no access to post-harvest facilities- thus affecting their income to sustain their families. Brgy. Talibadok is an agricultural land, and farming is one major source of income.

This sub-project is funded by the Mindanao Trust Fund- Reconstruction and Development Project Phase II (MTF-RDP/2)- implemented in support to the confidence-building measures on Camps Transformation under the Normalization Annex of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).

MTF-RDP/2 covers eight villages in the six acknowledged camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) namely: Camp Abubakar as-Siddique, Camp Badre, Camp Bilal bin Rabbah Darul Shuhada, Camp Busrah Somiorang, Camp Omar Ib’n Al-Kattab, and Camp Rajamuda.
MTF-RDP/2 focused its support to the Joint Task Forces on Camps Transformation (JTFCT) towards transforming their outlook from conflict to development. There is also a component on Alternative Learning System (ALS) that cater the needs of the vulnerable groups like the out-of-school youth, women, elderlies, person with disabilities, and others who were not able to complete education due to war and poverty.
Teamwork and respect
CPST Camp Omar is composed of Alimuddin Hadjinor (Community Development Officer), Nasser Masandag (community organizer), Engr. Abdulgaffar Sundang (rural infrastructure engineer), and Walid Maliga (driver).
When asked what is their best practice as a team that enabled them to be the first CPST to complete and successfully turned over one of two sub-projects in the said camp, these hardworking development workers said, “It’s the respect.”
“We respect each other. We recognize the role of each member of the team. We do consultation, we listen to everyone’s idea and then we come up with an informed and collective decision”, Engr. Sundang stated.

”Teamwork is also a winning practice”, Masandag stressed.

“We help one another. While we do our own job, based on our position, we also help each other if anyone of us cannot do his task because of some valid reasons”, Masandag added.

Meanwhile, Walid Maliga, the team driver, is appreciative to the team for considering his thoughts whenever they have activities to conduct.

Now, the team is happy to share that those individuals who have disbelief in them and to the project are their friends already. In fact, those people have asked for forgiveness from the team and since then, those enemies are now friends.
CPST Camp Omar told that these friends have become supportive of the project, generous to them, offering them food and warm welcome whenever they are in the community, for monitoring and supervision of the project implementation.

“The most important is the intention. As long as you know your goal, and why are you doing the project, and that it is for the benefit of people, not of a single individual, you will succeed” the team ended. (BDAInc.2020)

Read 703 times Last modified on Friday, 04 December 2020 07:32
Login to post comments