Integrating Children's Rights in Barangay Disaster ... - INEE Toolkit

Plans are already being made, for example, of setting up of a children’s educational fund, orconducting parenting education sessions, or holding training activities in disaster preparedness forcommunity members. There is a growing recognition of the need to activate and maximize villagelevelstructures such as the barangay council for the protection of children (BCPC) and the barangaydisaster coordinating committee (BDCC), and to make the most use of them.We are proud to acknowledge the emergence of a core group of 21 facilitators from sevenbarangays in Cotabato, including some barangay officials and members of community-based organizations,who are oriented on the framework of children’s rights and community-based disastermanagement, and who understand how the framework is applied in the development of planstowards child protection and disaster management. Anytime, they can be sent as trainers andfacilitators of training programs on CRP-CBDM in other barangays within and outside Pikit. Theyare a great resource today which the National Disaster Coordinating Council and the Municipalityof Pikit can tap and mobilize for capacity-building projects in other municipalities and barangays.Again as a result of this project, we think that coordination and collaboration at the interbarangaylevel has been improved, creating opportunities for sharing and joint undertaking ofactivities among the community members and barangay officials. Learning and insights on how toaddress issues of children and families at the barangay level have been shared and exchanged.The challenge now is in building from the project’s initial gains by helping the stakeholderstranslate their awareness of children’s rights into solid action through the integration in barangaygovernance of children’s rights and community-based disaster management.The experience of the seven Space for Peace barangays in Pikit, North Cotabato, is worthreplicating in the thousands of barangays in many parts of the country. On behalf of our partners,Center for Disaster Preparedness and the Save the Children-UK, we would like to urge everyone totake up the challenge of mainstreaming child rights programming in community-based disastermanagement.We can make a difference to Filipino children by taking these small and concrete steps,thereby gradually gathering strength for one giant leap for the benefit and well-being of our children,for the current and future generation.I wish to thank our community partners in the seven barangays of Pikit, our ever dependablepartner, the Immaculate Conception Parish and BALAY’s partners in the municipality of Pikitand all those who participated in the CRP-CBDM conference in Davao City, who all contributed tocomplete the module.Lorena B. dela CruzExecutive Directorii