February 27- The Department of Extension held its annual community day, moniker Panagtagbo. It was a one-day event at the gymnasium where MSU-IIT extension projects exhibited with the communities involved in the project. An academic institution, like IIT, is mandated to use its expertise to help the community in terms economic livelihood, literacy trainings, capacity buildings, sustainable programs, etc. To have a sense of community and to be responsive to its needs is an important character embed in the institute values. The list of exhibitors includes projects from the College of Arts and Social Sciences, College of Education, College of Science and Mathematics, Teenprenuers of the CBAA, College of Engineering and Technology, College of Nursing, IDEYA, FAB LAB Mindanao, Bamboo Technology Research Center, Ceramic Training Center, VOCEP, Federation of Women Organization in Initao, IPDM, and others.
The Department of Extension, currently headed by Dr. Ma. Cecilia Ferolin, spearheads this year’s Panagtabo 4. Various sectors in the community graced the opening program, as well as the IIT faculty, staff, and officials. To further encourage the exhibitors to package their booth extension work neatly and attractively, the DE held it through a contest. As a result, the College of Education grabbed the Best Booth Award and received P10, 000; runner-ups were the College of Science and Mathematics and the College of Nursing receiving P7,000 and P5,000 respectively.
Panagtagbo 4 also highlights the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) signing between the CED-IDS with the schools in Iligan City, the Luinab Elementary School, Ubaldo Laya Memorial School, Hinaplanon National High School, Iligan City East National High School; and between the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) with the College of Nursing. This occasion has again proven that MSU-IIT is not confined in its ivory towers, but has a towering commitment to serve the community.
“We wage war with the power to keep home. And home is always a tender thing,” said writer-film maker Adjani Arumpac during Woman/Hood: Changing Tapestries for Change, an International Women’s Day activity hosted by the Department of English, with support from Gender and Development Resource Center of the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension, on March 8, 2018 at the Mini Theater in MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology.
Arumpac’s documentary film War Is a Tender Thing is a gentle probe into her own family history—Christian on her mother’s side, Muslim on her father’s—and its complex relationship with Mindanao, a “dormant land of conflict” she calls home. It juxtaposes war on the domestic front with war in Mindanao. It tells the story of Arumpac’s parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, which is a story of mistrust, separation, massacre, and colonial manipulation. The film is driven by rich dimensions of diversity contained in every individual and her family’s undying memories of pain brought about by migration, martial law, and the war.
According to Arumpac, the film was about massive migration within the country in the 1930s, when the government gave ancestral Muslim and indigenous people’s lands to people in the capital (Luzon). The tender war lies in finding the link between the personal and historical, two entities that happened at the same time.
She shared that she originally intended to make a personal essay film, a type of documentary film that uses literature to create images. She wanted to explore the dynamics of cultural intermarriage and retell stories embedded in the memories of common people which are not found in historical texts, news, and official records.
Arumpac, a writer, filmmaker, and educator who specializes in the documentary film genre at the University of the Philippines, shared that her original plan was to make a personal essay film, a type of documentary film that uses literature to create images. She wanted to explore the dynamics of cultural intermarriage. She retold stories embedded in the memories of common people which are not found in historical texts, news, and official records.
“I tell stories in the memories of the common people, often not found on historical texts, news, official records perceived as unreliable and non-omniscient. The personal, the memory, the female, the common, the sub altered–I very much believe hold a sense of urgency that can reclaim a people’s long history of tragedy from the curatorial, referring to a narrative always moderated, mediated, censored, incomplete to state a mitigation.”
In the film, her uncle Abdul Arumpac expressed his deep sorrow recalling the war between the government forces and the MNLF as well as many other incidents. He conveyed his support for the Bangsamoro Basic Law which is currently in the process of getting signed by the government. He also said that the peace agreement would protect the rural folks from Mindanao.
War is a Tender Thing is the second in an ongoing autobiographical trilogy on internal diaspora in the Philippines. It has been shown in various film festivals, including Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Southeast Asian Film Festival, Signes de Nuit International Festival, and Cine Totoo: Philippine International Documentary Film Festival.
The film has also been widely screened in a series of fora and fundraising for the Marawi’s internally displaced persons organized by the BAI Indigenous Women’s Network, a coalition of women’s organizations and individuals that are committed to help displaced women in Marawi.
Aside from the film showing, the English Department has also organized an array of activities throughout March in celebration of the International Women’s Month. These include a movie screening, an essay writing contest, and a poetry reading event. According to Melicent J. Arig of the English Department, these activities aim to inspire and empower women to maximize their potential by using their voices. They seek to draw attention to the rights, richness, and diversity of creative expressions of Filipino Women.
Department Chairperson Nelia G. Balgoa also talked about women’s struggles in all parts of the world. She thanked the Feminist Movement for risking their reputation so that women of this age can have access to these rights.
“We just do not celebrate; but there are instances that will lead women to push. But pushing implies the breaking of softness and fragility of women that do not sit well in the in the society where the dominance of men is still evident. And society does not take kindly for women to push. We have to remember that [it is] in pushing that we untangle the tapestries for change.”
When asked this question, one tourist spot rises above everyone else – the majestic Ma. Cristina Falls that powers 70% of Mindanao. You can ask even the most elderly in your family the history of Ma. Cristina, of how it existed and of how it came to be as it is right now. When you look it up online or in books, you will see the rich information of its history and how it represents the city and why it is situated inside a power plant. This information and everything that you know about the most majestic falls in Iligan is made possible by cultural mapping.
Cultural Mapping is a tool to identify the cultural resources of communities. It is a way of mapping the culture of a community and its outcomes can be harnessed and directed to create sustainable futures and preserve the cultural properties found today.
In line with this, ten barangays of Iligan City participated in the cultural mapping project of the History Department together with the local government of Iligan City which seeks to identify and examine cultural properties and heritage resources of Iligan City. The project aims to expand the frontiers of local history and strengthen our identity as a people.
Jay Rome Delos Santos talks about Cultural Mapping in the Cluster 3 Seminar-Workshop on February 7, 2018 at Hoyohoy Restaurant, Dalipuga, Iligan City.
According to Jay Rome Delos Santos, a faculty member of the History Department who served as one of the lecturers during the cultural mapping seminar-workshops, the city is rich in cultural properties and heritage resources. Documentation on how these resources were conceptualized and built and how they have changed through time, however, is still an area for improvement.
The seminar-training workshop was first conducted on June 5 and 6, 2017 at the CASSalida Theater, MSU-IIT. Christine Dulnuan, senior History researcher of the National Historical Commission; Jonathan Balsamo, a curator of Museo Valenzuela and Secretary of the Philippine Historical Association; Geoffrey Salgado, a retired professor of the History Department; and Luis Montesclaros, a faculty member of the Department, served as resource speakers. Dep-Ed teachers and barangay officials who attended the event which introduced the methodologies and standard procedures in conducting cultural mapping.
To more effectively expand the frontiers of local history and strengthen our identity as a people, the Department decided to go into the grassroots level and conduct cultural mapping seminars with the residents themselves.
To date, ten barangays have participated in the said activities. Each barangay was categorized based on the LGU’s clustering of barangays based on geographical location. Two of these seminars were conducted for Cluster 1 (Abono, Buruun, and Ma. Cristina) and for Cluster 2 (Pala-o, Poblacion, and Tambacan) in the last quarter of 2017. This year, a seminar for Cluster 3 (Acmac, Dalipuga, Kiwalan, and Sta. Filomena) was held on February 7 at Hoyohoy Restaurant.
Each seminar began with Your Story, Our History where the local history of the participating barangays were presented. According to Delos Santos, knowing the local history of a place makes it easier for residents to identify the cultural properties within their respective barangays.
Participants from Acmac, Dalipuga, Kiwalan, and Sta. Filomena list the cultural properties in their respective barangays during the Cluster 3 Seminar-Workshop on February 7, 2018 at Hoyohoy Restaurant, Dalipuga, Iligan City.
At the end of each seminar-workshop, the participants were able to produce an initial registry of the cultural properties in their cluster. Aside from documenting the cultural properties and heritage resources, the seminar-workshop also sought to help in preserving them not only through ordinances but also through cooperation between the LGU and the community.
Dr. Nimfa Bracamonte, former Director for Extension, and Dr. Franco G. Teves, Director for Research, led the parallel session on the condition of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of the Marawi Seige during the 11th Philippine National Health Research System Week on August 24-25, 2017 at PICC, Pasay City with the theme “Research and Innovations in Health: Empowering and Transforming Communities”.
Dr. Bracamonte was the lead discussant of the said session of which her presentation was entitled “Marawi Siege Aftermath: Phases and Faces of Internally Displaced Persons’ Psychosocial and Socioeconomic Condition”. Her discussion covered a brief introduction of the Mindanao Problem which led to the rise of different extremist groups in the island and ended with the collective recommendations for the IDPs. Dr. Teves, on the other hand, was one of the panelists in the session who gave insights on the direct health consequences of the armed conflict, best practices on the interventions given, ethical considerations in conducting research in conflict settings and how to mobilize the MSU System and other HEIs in the region to undertake Disaster Risk Reduction-Health Researches. Among the other panel members were DOH-Region X Epidemiologist, Dr. David A. Mendoza, former MSU President, Dr. Ricardo F. De Leon, Dr. Jose Dennis Mancia of Iligan Medical Center College (IMCC) and two professors from MSU-Marawi, Dr. Cynthia Filipinas and Dr. Fema Abamo, MSU Director for Research.
This parallel session was sponsored by the Northern Mindanao Consortium for Health Research and Development (NorMinCoHRD) of which MSU-IIT, DOH-Region X, and IMCC were member institutions. The discussion was well attended by different stakeholders from the both public and private sectors and organizations in the three islands of the country.
CBAA conducted an extension program on “Needs Assessment Workshop for Selected Barangay Officials in Iligan City” last July 28, 2017 at Unde Hall, CBAA Building, MSU-IIT, Iligan City. The said program aimed to provide a space for open and active discussion about problems and issues surrounding the different barangays in Iligan City and to identify possible solutions for remediation and mitigation. One of the areas of concern is to learn more about good assessment practices. It is purposely implemented to assess and find solutions to their identified issues and problems.
Barangay captains, secretaries, and other officials coming from the selected different barangays of Iligan City constituted the participants of the workshop. Many barangays were invited; however, only four responded. These barangays were the following: Del Carmen, Sto. Rosario, Saray, and Santiago. All four barangays were tapped as participating barangays of the workshop.
The program was formally started with an opening remarks given by the Dean of CBAA, Dr. Polaus M. Bari. He emphasized in his message that the main reason for conducting the said workshop is to assess the problems and needs of the different barangays, as well as to provide possible remedial actions for development. He pointed out that their problems and needs were the subject matter of the discussion.
After which, Dr. Pamela Resurreccion, MBM Coordinator, discussed through a PowerPoint presentation the McKinsey 7S Model. Seven (7) elements were highlighted in the presentation, namely: Strategy, Structure, System, Shared Values, Skills, Style, and Staff. Thus, they were clearly defined and explicated in her presentation.
During the Workshop Output Processing and the Open Forum, the participants were asked to present their problems and needs for evaluation and discussion. Many questions were raised to address the identified problems and needs of the different barangays. In fact, it is beneficial to note that Dr. Puting, the University Physician, is willing to help or assess anything related to medical matters.
As to the Closing remarks, Asst. Prof. Beatriz Fina Canedo, CBAA Assistant Dean, expressed her thanks and gratitude to the participants for their cooperation and for responding positively.
