COTABATO CITY—An officer of a youth organization says youth engagement in several developmental endeavors plays crucial role in community development.
Donna Barrameda, secretary of Lakas Kabataan-Basilan Youth in Action, shared their organization’s various initiatives in capacitating the youth to become community change-makers during the Bangsamoro Youth Hours’ 19th episode, on Thursday, May 12.
Barrameda highlighted the organization’s core advocacy inclined to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on quality education, peace initiatives, youth empowerment, and environmental awareness and conservation.
Among the activities conducted related to education include Handog Outreach Program para sa Edukasyon (HOPE) and Project PILAS which both aim at providing educational materials to youth — including Arabic students — who reside from far-flung areas of the province.
Anchored on peace initiatives are series of symposium and community dialogue intending to forge connection between community members from different areas.
Moreover, the organization conducts tree-planting activities and clean-up drives in order to instil the sense of responsibility and accountability in protecting one’s environment,
On the other hand, the youth empowerment advocacy aims at molding youth to become youth leaders by increasing youth participation through capacity building, leadership trainings, community engagements, among others.
Meanwhile, Barrameda also shared her experiences during the Ideation Impact Challenge, a project-pitching mechanism spearheaded by the Bangsamoro Youth Commission (BYC), which they have conducted months ago in the town of Lantawan.
The project dubbed ‘Youth Fair’, aims to offer services and opportunities especially for the out of school youth in collaboration with concerned youth serving agencies and institution.
Barrameda, during her message, highlighted the critical role of the youth in helping address community issues and concerns.
“To my fellow youth, I am encouraging you all to join in a youth organization to for you to capacitate yourselves. There will always be something in you that you can share to your fellow youth, especially in addressing our community concerns,” Barrameda said.
“The efforts that we do also serve as ‘Sadaqah’ that we can benefit from even in the hereafter. You just need to try and participate. It’s all worth it,” she added.
LK-BYA came to existence when they attended a training in 2017 that gathered different youths across the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The training made realization to form an organization to sustain the lessons learned through putting it to practice within their respective communities.
Bangsamoro Youth Hours streams every Thursday, 4 PM to 5 PM at the Facebook pages of Bangsamoro Youth Commission and Bangsamoro Media Productions and airs at DXAE FM 99.7 MHz radio station in Cotabato City. (BYC PR Unit)
