Displaced Marawi kids now supplied with meals in makeshift schools

LANAO DEL SUR --- Muslim school children from Marawi City are now supplied with hot meal each day since last week by local and foreign benefactors, one of them a Christian humanitarian outfit.The feeding project is a common initiative of the Gawad Kalinga, the World Food Programme and the Department of Education-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.Organizers said it is meant to keep conflict-stricken children healthy while they proceed with their studies in Temporary Learning Spaces or TLS in campuses outside of Marawi City.The TLS are in tents erected in open spaces in campuses far from the battle-torn Marawi City, capital of Lanao del Sur, one of ARMM’s five component-provinces.The large tents for the TLS sites were supplied by the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Vision, an international Christian child welfare and protection organization.Both entities are helping provide for the needs of internally-displaced school children from Marawi City.The first batch of children included in the daily food rationing launched last week is comprised of a thousand pupils now in evacuation sites in Saguiaran town in Lanao del Sur.John Magno, regional secretary of DepEd-ARMM, saidon Saturdaythat the regional government is thankful to the local and foreign benefactors helping feed school children whose families were forced to leave Marawi City when Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists laid siege in several barangays there onMay 23.The hostilities in Marawi City have since dragged on and there is no clear timeline yet on when will government’s counter-terrorism operations there end. Rain or shine, the feeding of these children with hot, nutritious meals will be done inside their respective TLS, Magno said.DepEd-ARMM is targeting the expansion of the project in the next two weeks to accommodate 4,000 more children.The hostilities in Marawi City displaced almost 300,000 villagers by latest count of the ARMM’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team and the provincial crisis management committee led by Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal AdiongJr. Our preparations for these health and educational interventions for children are programmed until December 2017, a contingency premised on calculations that they still cannot return to Marawi City in the coming months, Magno said.Ana Zenaida Unte, assistant superintendent of public schools in Marawi City, saidon Saturdaythat all of the more than 700 teachers that went missing when terrorists attacked the city have all been accounted for.Marawi City has 1,426 teachers working in different barangays there.Unte said all of their teachers and officials of DepED-ARMM based in Marawi City are evacuees too, displaced by the trouble that caused the destruction of 11 public schools there. Some of these damaged schools were razed by fire, some were destroyed by bombs, Unte said.Unte said a big number of teachers lost their houses to conflagrations too. Despite their being an internally-displaced people now their dedication to continue working for elementary pupils and high school students remain in their hearts, zealous just the same, Unte said.Magno said the displaced public school teachers are managing efficiently the TLS that are scattered in safe areas.Magno said they are grateful to some Visayan teachers in Marawi City for sticking it out with their Maranaw students despite threats of execution by terrorists espousing persecution of Christians and moderate Muslims who disagree with their religious malpractices. Magno said their foreign-assisted feeding project will be expanded in the coming weeks to accommodate 4,000 more grade school pupils from Marawi City.The project is being implemented with the help of nutrition experts from Gawad Kalinga, a Philippine poverty alleviation movement connected to funders supporting humanitarian activities for marginalized sectors.Meanwhile, the Philippine Public School Teachers Association (PPSTA) has approve a P30,000 cash loan for teachers in Marawi City, as amelioration support, to cushion the adverse impact of their displacement to their performance of duties. We also ought to thank the PPSTA for this initiative. The funds for the loan packages will be drawn from the treasury of this very big organization which is national in stature, Magno said.