[Be The Good] Defending the ‘metropolis of falls’ from false

‘The Mindanaoan Movers now add their voices to the symphony of Movers we’ve skilled in Iloilo and Batangas’

After a whirlwind three weeks of journey and planning, I write this article on the final day of our #AmbagNatin roadshow for 2024. Iligan, the “Metropolis of Majestic Waterfalls,” is the final cease of our voter empowerment roadshow, which took us to Iloilo within the Visayas, to Lipa Metropolis in Batangas, and now right here, in Mindanao.

Graciously hosted by the Mindanao State College–Iligan Institute of Know-how, along with our companions, we held a public discussion board that included native journalists, academe, and the Fee on Elections. Earlier than the December 9 discussion board, we held a sequence of workshops for younger Mindanaoans who need to write tales about points that matter to their neighborhood, in time for the 2025 elections.

These younger ones, who we name Movers, hail, not simply from Iligan Metropolis, however from close by Marawi Metropolis, Tandag Metropolis in Surigao del Sur, and Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte. 

One purpose we needed to carry one leg of the roadshow in Iligan Metropolis is as a result of it’s a hub for the area. Whereas not part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Area in Muslim Mindanao, it’s shut sufficient that Marawi residents would go to right here and have second properties right here. Throughout the Marawi siege, it served as a base for humanitarian organizations and displaced Marawi residents. On the identical time, it’s near Cagayan de Oro Metropolis, dwelling to the oldest press membership within the nation and a significant assembly level of cultures, dialects, and methods of pondering.

This space is necessary to us due to the historic Bangsamoro elections set to happen subsequent yr, alongside the senatorial and native polls. The risk of postponement of the Bangsamoro elections has solely heightened tensions. You possibly can sense the entire metropolis holding its breath for what is going to come subsequent.

Disinformation is without doubt one of the issues many are anxious about. There are challenges distinctive to this a part of the nation, with the upcoming first parliamentary elections being simply one in every of them. One Mover tells us there are components of the Bangsamoro area the place the one supply of knowledge is the two-way radio. Battle and violence proceed to forestall web connectivity at an age when the United Nations has declared web entry a fundamental human proper.

With native journalism barely surviving, as attested by Merlyn Manos (Nationwide Union of Journalists of the Philippines chapter president right here), residents are pressured to depend on Fb teams for updates and information about their metropolis or city. These Fb teams are arrange by shady figures, anybody is allowed to publish something, and there’s no one fact-checking content material. A Mover recollects seeing pictures of blown-up physique components posted on one in every of these Fb teams, with little to no context.

In Marawi Metropolis, one faulty publish about mpox was sufficient to persuade a faculty to cancel lessons, mentioned one Mover from the town. Mother and father had referred to as in, demanding for sophistication cancellation, after seeing the unverified publish. Finally, native well being officers issued advisories to fact-check the publish. However by then, the scholars had already been disadvantaged, needlessly, of a full day at college.

For this reason native journalism issues. So it offers me hope that 10 younger folks confirmed up at our workshops to be Movers, to work with Rappler to deliver tales from their communities to mild. The variety of their story concepts was astonishing — from flooding in Iligan Metropolis, to the political dimensions of early marriages in Marawi Metropolis, to harmful roads in Tandag Metropolis.

The Mindanaoan Movers now add their voices to the symphony of Movers we’ve skilled in Iloilo and Batangas.

Within the subsequent few months, or through the 2025 election interval, we will probably be working with our 36 Movers to deliver community-driven tales to Rappler, and past. We hope our platform helps them increase consciousness about points that matter to them, and make clear tales hitherto not but advised on a nationwide information outlet.

By way of mentorship and useful resource help, we are going to do our greatest to make these tales attain you. However we are able to’t do it alone. If you wish to donate to our neighborhood journalism challenge, you are able to do so right here in our crowdfunding web page. Be happy to e-mail me about this as effectively, at pia.ranada@rappler.com.

Our workshops and public discussion board wouldn’t have been doable with out the help of our companions — MSU-IIT, Institute for Peace and Growth in Mindanao, MSU-IIT Youth Chain of Peace, Kataas-taasang Sangguniang ng mga Magazine-aaral, and the coed publication Silahis MSU.

Thanks, and till our subsequent collaboration! – Rappler.com

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