In 2013-15, the Center implemented a curricular project to ingest peace education and peacebuilding in Mindanao, with a grant from the US Institute of Peace (USIP). Forty-five faculty members participated in this endeavor. The two-year project was completed, in cooperation with three campuses of Mindanao State University, in the Philippines. They comprised the MSU Main Campus in Marawi City, MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan City, and MSU-Tawi-Tawi College of Technology & Oceanography in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi. Aside from empowering the history teachers, the project also produced a manual for studies in History 3. Dr. Fred Magdalena is the grant writer and has served as project director.
eMindanao is an offshoot of the USIP Project, part of the Center’s initiative to develop a Mindanao Studies Program at UH Mānoa. It is our modest contribution to the emerging focus on Islam in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. Carried out on a larger plane, this initiative is an outreach project in the southern Philippines with three campuses of Mindanao State University (Marawi, Iligan, General Santos), and Ateneo de Zamboanga University.
CPS conducted four seminar workshops in the summer of 2013-2014 in Iligan City for history teachers, thanks to the generous support of USIP and the active collaboration of the three MSU campuses. These workshops empowered MSU teachers, enhanced their pedagogical capacity, and improved the local history curriculum (History 3).
Mindful of the significance of the on-and-off peace process in Mindanao, a digital library on the historical, social, and political dimensions was conceived. Part of that project came as an annotated bibliography, available at this link: eMindanao Annotated Bibliography 2015. Another outcome of the project is an anthology about Mindanao edited by Dr. Juvanni A. Caballero for the teaching of a required course, Hist 3 (History of Muslims & Lumads in Mindanao) at MSU.