LILY HANDICRAFT-Ethnic Maguindanaoan women sell a few samples of their bags made from water lilies at a recent forum on the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro in Buluan, a town in Maguindanao bordering the 220,000-Hectare Liguasan... (Ali G. Macabalang)
COTABATO, Philippines – While perceived as a menace to thousands of people living in low areas here and in nearby Maguindanao towns adjacent to rivers during rainy days, water lilies abounding the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh have been a source of livelihood for hundreds of mostly widows of former Moro rebels living around the delta.
True to the words of a former regional trade official in the Muslim Mindanao region that “there can be positive dimension in a world of problems,” collaborating government line agencies and local government units have been training and assisting several organized female residents in a cottage industry that emerged some three years ago out of the menacing water lilies.
The stalks and leaves of a water hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes) are durable materials for bags, mats, slippers and home decors that are now sold in other regions and even designed to cover foreign markets. Water lilies, according to Department of Science and Technology (DOST) researchers, can also be ground finely, mixed with a durable binding compound, and molded into wall boards and panel sheets for construction and industrial purposes.
But for the moment, the DOST and other line agencies alongside the local governments (LGUs) in North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao surrounding the Liguasan delta are led by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process (OPAPP) in assisting some 2,000 female residents trained and engaged in producing personal gadgets made out of water lilies.
There are estimated 10,000 families of guerillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and even the renegade Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM). In Maguindanao, almost a dozen of cooperatives involving mostly widows of slain MNLF and MILF combatants have been engaged in making bags, mats, slippers and other personal gadgets out of processed water lily stalks and leaves, according to Lea Sagan, an OPAPP liaison for the office of Governor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu.
In an earlier Manila Bulletin interview, Gov. Mangudadatu recalled having initially organized a cooperative for 800 female constituents upon his election in 2010, providing them an initial seed money of P250,000 and P1 million additional fund later. He said his office would allocate another P1-million subsidy early this year.
“We’re very glad in embarking on one project that addresses two concerns: The poverty among our female residents that are mostly widows; and the conversion of the menace of water lilies into a source of livelihood,” Mangudadatu said.
Thousands of villagers in more than 20 barangays in the city and in nearby towns of Kabuntalan, Sultan Kudarat and Northern Kabuntalan in Maguindanao, Pigkawayan and Midsayap in North Cotabato were dislocated when vast carpets of water hyacinths blocked in 2008 and 2010 the downstream channels of the Rio Grande de Mindanao.
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/390487/moro-widows-earn-from-lilies
True to the words of a former regional trade official in the Muslim Mindanao region that “there can be positive dimension in a world of problems,” collaborating government line agencies and local government units have been training and assisting several organized female residents in a cottage industry that emerged some three years ago out of the menacing water lilies.
The stalks and leaves of a water hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes) are durable materials for bags, mats, slippers and home decors that are now sold in other regions and even designed to cover foreign markets. Water lilies, according to Department of Science and Technology (DOST) researchers, can also be ground finely, mixed with a durable binding compound, and molded into wall boards and panel sheets for construction and industrial purposes.
But for the moment, the DOST and other line agencies alongside the local governments (LGUs) in North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao surrounding the Liguasan delta are led by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace Process (OPAPP) in assisting some 2,000 female residents trained and engaged in producing personal gadgets made out of water lilies.
There are estimated 10,000 families of guerillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and even the renegade Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM). In Maguindanao, almost a dozen of cooperatives involving mostly widows of slain MNLF and MILF combatants have been engaged in making bags, mats, slippers and other personal gadgets out of processed water lily stalks and leaves, according to Lea Sagan, an OPAPP liaison for the office of Governor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu.
In an earlier Manila Bulletin interview, Gov. Mangudadatu recalled having initially organized a cooperative for 800 female constituents upon his election in 2010, providing them an initial seed money of P250,000 and P1 million additional fund later. He said his office would allocate another P1-million subsidy early this year.
“We’re very glad in embarking on one project that addresses two concerns: The poverty among our female residents that are mostly widows; and the conversion of the menace of water lilies into a source of livelihood,” Mangudadatu said.
Thousands of villagers in more than 20 barangays in the city and in nearby towns of Kabuntalan, Sultan Kudarat and Northern Kabuntalan in Maguindanao, Pigkawayan and Midsayap in North Cotabato were dislocated when vast carpets of water hyacinths blocked in 2008 and 2010 the downstream channels of the Rio Grande de Mindanao.
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/390487/moro-widows-earn-from-lilies
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