Peacebuilding through Education, Dialogue, and Friendship!
The Madaris Volunteer Program is a peacebuilding initiative where college graduates are recruited, trained, and deployed by the program as volunteer madaris teachers to teach in madaris (Islamic schools) located in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The MVP is being implemented by Ateneo de Davao University through its strategic partnerships with the National Association for Bangsamoro Education, Inc. (NABEI), and the Regional Government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
The Madaris Volunteers serve the communities of the BARMM, whose literacy rate consistently ranks as the lowest in the country. The schoolchildren whom the Madaris Volunteers serve have been victims of armed conflict and decades-long historical disenfranchisement that still persists today. Hence, the volunteer madaris teachers are deployed to teach DepEd-mandated subjects in selected madaris where they would also stay with host families in the Bangsamoro, engage in interreligious and intercultural dialogue with Bangsamoro communities, and advocate for peacebuilding through education and friendship. Aside from helping to raise the quality of education in the partner madaris, the MVP also seeks to be a catalyst for healing and reconciliation through transformative encounters. After years of injustice and conflict, the focus of the Bangsamoro and its people now lies on promoting peace and justice toward reconciliation and healing. We are now in our 8th year of volunteer deployment and we have deployed 119 volunteers.
In line with its mission to assist in improving the quality of education in the Bangsamoro, the Madaris Volunteer Program also spearheads capability enhancement trainings and a variety of seminars and workshops specifically designed to address the individual needs of the MVP’s partner madaris. These capability enhancement trainings aim to empower partner madaris in their capability to facilitate learning, to design strategies for their schools, and to manage their respective learning institutions. They are facilitated in partnership with various offices and organizations of the Ateneo de Davao University as well as other CEAP-member schools.
What sets the Madaris Volunteer Program (MVP) apart from other programs supporting Madaris Education is its interreligious and intercultural nature. The MVP is a response to the Document of Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together signed by Pope Francis and Grand Imam of Al Azhar University in Cairo, Ahmed Al Tayyeb, on February 4, 2019, in Abu Dhabi, which calls for the adoption of a “Culture dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as
the code of conduct; and reciprocal understanding as method and standard”.