Joining a number of government and development agencies across fourteen countries in Asia, the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA) shared experience on community driven development (CDD) in conflict-affected context during the recent 2nd Asia regional conference on CDD on March 24-27, 2015 at Movenpick Hotel in Mactan Island, Cebu City.

“We are grateful to the Philippine government for hosting this year’s Asia regional conference and to the World Bank for inviting the BDA once again to impart its operation experiences on CDD implementation in the conflict-affected areas in Mindanao. With this opportunity, the agency is finally plotted in the map of the CDD community of practitioners in Asia”, said BDA executive director Dr. Mohammad Yacob.

“Piloted in 2006, the Mindanao Trust Fund Reconstruction and Development Program (MTFRDP) which adopted CDD as development approach, has already benefited a total of 496,527 people – about half of which are women. It had covered 214 barangays in 75 municipalities in Mindanao”, Yacob further said.

MTF-RDP is a program aimed at assisting economic and social recovery in the conflict-affected and vulnerable areas of Mindanao. The program is a capacity-building with technical assistance to Bangsamoro Development Agency. It is implemented through learning-by-doing activities, including implementation of community identified livelihood and infrastructures with the support of local government units.

Director Yacob told that “on top of capacity building, the program was able to respond to 379 community identified livelihood and infrastructures”.

In the last day of the CDD conference, BDA program head Engr. Windel Diangcalan shared program implementation in operating CDD in fragile or conflict-affected context. He joined Abdul Rahman Ayubi, National Solidarity Program executive director in Afghanistan as discussion leader.

Engr. Diangcalan, during the sharing session, informed that prior to the inception of the Mindanao Trust Fund Reconstruction and Development Program (MTFRDP) in 2005, the BDA thought of a model that shall effectively respond to the high degree of mistrust among the people in the community and between the community and the government. With technical support from the World Bank then, who is administering the Mindanao Trust Fund, CDD is adopted by the BDA as a main development approach that is potential to build trust and build capacity of an institution.

Engr. Diangcalan stressed that” because of the conflict context, CDD implementation in the conflict-affected areas in Mindanao did not come easy”.

“The agency underwent rigorous processing of learnings based on CDD operation experiences since its pilot implementation pilot in 2006 until the current program partnership agreement to ensure that CDD as development approach is culturally and politically sensitive to the Bangsamoro context. One of the key innovation was the incorporation of values transformation training in CDD cycle”, Diangcalan added.

With MTF-RDP, BDA had the opportunity to learn and demonstrate its capability in resource mobilization and program management, including financial management.

The 12 years’ experience and partnership with different development partners brought BDA the required technical capability in planning and resource mobilization.

When asked on how the CDD scaling up looks in the Bangsamoro context, Engr. Diangcalan shared that “the agency is proposing a new program under the Mindanao Trust Fund that shall build on the knowledge and experiences gained the from the MTFRDP implementation and it shall be informed by the Bangsamoro Development Plan to deliver quick impact projects that will attempt to help deliver the peace dividends in the ground as the Bangsamoro moves to post-conflict situation”.