USAID Official visits solar-powered MNLF stronghold

Pagalungan, Maguindanao--USAID Bureau for Asia and the Near East Deputy Assistant Administrator Lisa Chiles based in Washington paid a one-day  visit to a stronghold of the Moro National Liberation Front in the southern Philippine village of Linandangan on February 21, 2008.
Chiles, accompanied by USAID Deputy Director Washington, visited the village of Linandangan and held discussions with combatants who received assistance from the Alliance for Mindanao Off-grid Renewable Energy Program. AMORE is a partnership of the USAID, the Philippine Department of Energy, Mirant Philippines Foundation, Inc., the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Winrock International.

“We’re glad that through television we get to know what’s happening in other parts of the country and the world,” says ex-MNLF combatant Tanie Mamaluba, 39.

On May 2005 thirty households in the village were lighted by a 50-wattpeak solar home system. Three years later, the Barangay Renewable Energy and Community Development Association (BRECDA) remains active, having invested PhP40,000 in sugarcane farming in the past year, and recording PhP19,000 left in the bank for battery replacements and the systems’ maintenance.

A year after, On November 2006 the village Elementary School was installed with a 25-wattpeak photovoltaic system, and was thereby given access to multimedia-assisted education. With the use of Real World Productions (RWP) compact disks which contain lessons in the English language, teachers and students alike improve their English language facility under the IELTLM Project (Improving English Language Teaching and Learning in Mindanao).

Faisel Kimola, the school’s Grade 6 teacher, says that barely three months after using the multimedia program, he had observed a significant improvement in the students’ passing rate at the Department of Education-administered monthly evaluation tests. At one point, only 25 percent in the class did not make the passing mark – a considerable leap from the class’ performance in the previous months.