‘Bangon Marawi,’ humanitarian groups gear up for livelihood mediations

Subcommittee on Business and Livelihood of Task Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM) and its partner agencies under Mindanao Humanitarian Team braced efforts as they meet for the Livelihood Convergence Workshop.

The workshop aims to create a roadmap of livelihood interventions by the different agencies distributed across the different barangays of Marawi City and to establish a strategic coordination mechanism on monitoring, evaluation, information dissemination and documentation of livelihood programs and projects.

TFBM Field Office manager Assistant Secretary Felix Castro Jr. emphasized the significance of the workshop as this will prepare a consolidated list of all Programs, Projects and Activities (PPAs) of the member agencies of the Subcommittee on Business and Livelihood which will be distributed until December 31, 2018.

“The reason why we are conducting this Livelihood workshop is to ensure that these (livelihood interventions) will be distributed to the right beneficiaries, and most of the internally displaced persons of Marawi will receive,” Castro said.

Initiated by TFBM in partnership with World Food Programme (WFP) and the local government unit of Marawi, the three-day workshop also highlights the synergy among the different agencies which provide livelihood support for the City.

“The bottom-line of this workshop is that we are able to show that while it is true that we can implement it on our own, but we can do better in implementing this if we discuss it with other agencies and organizations,” said Baicon Macaraya, national programme officer and head of Iligan Sub-Office of WFP.

“Let’s work together. We can make our interventions sustainable. We can have complementarities and we can have synergies. And that is how we can do it if we work together and coordinated to one another,” Stephen Gluning, WFP Country Director in the Philippines, said.

“This is a very important activity for the rehabilitation of Marawi City. It is very important that we integrate all the livelihood components of our interventions otherwise we will have interventions that will not cover all the areas,” TFBM chairperson Secretary Eduardo Del Rosario said. (LEAntonio/PIA ICCC)