[Be The Good] Protecting the ‘city of falls’ from false

After a whirlwind three weeks of travel and planning, I write this newsletter on the last day of our #AmbagNatin roadshow for 2024. Iligan, the “City of Majestic Waterfalls,” is the last stop of our voter empowerment roadshow, which took us to Iloilo in the Visayas, to Lipa City in Batangas, and now here, in Mindanao.

Graciously hosted by the Mindanao State University–Iligan Institute of Technology, together with our partners, we held a public forum that included local journalists, academe, and the Commission on Elections. Before the December 9 forum, we held a series of workshops for young Mindanaoans who want to write stories about issues that matter to their community, in time for the 2025 elections.

These young ones, who we call Movers, hail, not just from Iligan City, but from nearby Marawi City, Tandag City in Surigao del Sur, and Kauswagan in Lanao del Norte. 

One reason we wanted to hold one leg of the roadshow in Iligan City is because it is a hub for the region. While not a part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, it is close enough that Marawi residents would visit here and have second homes here. During the Marawi siege, it served as a base for humanitarian organizations and displaced Marawi residents. At the same time, it is close to Cagayan de Oro City, home to the oldest press club in the country and a major meeting point of cultures, dialects, and ways of thinking.

This area is important to us because of the historic Bangsamoro elections set to take place next year, alongside the senatorial and local polls. The possibility of postponement of the Bangsamoro elections has only heightened tensions. You can sense the whole city holding its breath for what will come next.

Disinformation is one of the things many are worried about. There are challenges unique to this part of the country, with the upcoming first parliamentary elections being just one of them. One Mover tells us there are parts of the Bangsamoro region where the only source of information is the two-way radio. Conflict and violence continue to prevent internet connectivity at an age when the United Nations has declared internet access a basic human right.

With local journalism barely surviving, as attested by Merlyn Manos (National Union of Journalists of the Philippines chapter president here), citizens are forced to rely on Facebook groups for updates and news about their city or town. These Facebook groups are set up by shady figures, anyone is allowed to post anything, and there is no one fact-checking content. A Mover recalls seeing photos of blown-up body parts posted on one of these Facebook groups, with little to no context.

In Marawi City, one erroneous post about mpox was enough to convince a school to cancel classes, said one Mover from the city. Parents had called in, demanding for class cancellation, after seeing the unverified post. Eventually, local health officials issued advisories to fact-check the post. But by then, the students had already been deprived, needlessly, of a full day at school.

This is why local journalism matters. So it gives me hope that 10 young people showed up at our workshops to be Movers, to work with Rappler to bring stories from their communities to light. The diversity of their story ideas was astonishing — from flooding in Iligan City, to the political dimensions of early marriages in Marawi City, to dangerous roads in Tandag City.

The Mindanaoan Movers now add their voices to the symphony of Movers we’ve trained in Iloilo and Batangas.

In the next few months, or during the 2025 election period, we will be working with our 36 Movers to bring community-driven stories to Rappler, and beyond. We hope our platform helps them raise awareness about issues that matter to them, and shed light on stories hitherto not yet told on a national news outlet.

Through mentorship and resource support, we will do our best to make these stories reach you. But we can’t do it alone. If you want to donate to our community journalism project, you can do so here in our crowdfunding page. Feel free to email me about this as well, at pia.ranada@rappler.com.

Our workshops and public forum would not have been possible without the support of our partners — MSU-IIT, Institute for Peace and Development in Mindanao, MSU-IIT Youth Chain of Peace, Kataas-taasang Sangguniang ng mga Mag-aaral, and the student publication Silahis MSU.

Thank you, and until our next collaboration! – Rappler.com

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