The establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) in 2019 signaled the end of over the 40-year struggle by the Bangsamoro people in one of the longest-running insurgencies in Asia. The Bangsamoro interim leadership faced enormous challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic inits first year. Their elections were postponed to 2025, giving the Transition Authority Parliament time to strengthen their plans to meet their development goals.
The BARMM is rich with stories about its cultural heritage, history, and its people. However, BARMM stories — whether on media and social media — often focus on armed conflict, displacement, and poverty.
There is a need to heighten awareness of multifaceted, underreported concerns, such as the Bangsamoro identity and perceptions, gender responsiveness, women and youth participation, volunteerism.
The “Telling the BARMM Story:Media Training and Fellowship” by the Probe Media Foundation, Inc. addresses this need by enhancing capacities and providing opportunities to BARMM storytellers to cover issues with an intersectional gender lens and culturally sensitive approach.
The project kicked off with a three-hour webinar on October 5, 2022 with over 250 attendees - journalists, reporters, storytellers, communicators - from all over the Philippines. The online training offered new ways of telling the story of the BARMM.
Brizza Rosales of Lente Philippines started off the program with a concise overview on the BARMM Parliament. This was followed by a discussion on BARMM challenges and opportunities with Brizza, Abdel Jamal Ramos Disangcopan of the Bangsamoro Authority Parliament and Selahuddin Yu Hashim of The Moropreneur, Inc.
Award-winning filmmaker Teng Mangansakan spoke on how to tell stories using a culturally sensitive approach. Investigative journalist, Ana P. Santos, gave an overview of how to stories using an intersectional gender lens.And Inna Gacad, founder of Lunas Collective outlined ways to conduct interviews that are trauma-informed and survivor - focused.
PMFI will hold a 3-day intensive workshop for selected communicators in Davao City to deepen input on "Telling BARMM Stories." The Media Fellowship program invites interested storytellers to submit proposals to receive grants to support projects. The project looks to support stories that amplify the points of view of women, girls, indigenous communities, and other relevant stakeholders. Their voices must be included in the dialogue and decisions to help shift narratives on negative perceptions of Bangsamoro Filipinos and foster solidarity and cohesion that has been fractured by years of armed conflict.
Watch the webinar in full here:
The project is conducted by the Probe Media Foundation,Inc. in partnership with The Asia Foundation (TAF) under the Activate Bangsamoro Phase II Project.
