Ms. Baidido Manalasal Saganding has been appointed as the new Program Officer of Interfaith Cooperation Forum. Baidido is from Pagangan, Aleosan, Cotabato, Philippines. Having taken a college degree in Social Work in a school affiliated with a Protestant Church and having passed the board exam given by the Professional Regulation Commission of the Philippines, Baidido is a Registered Social Worker. She holds a masters’ degree in Management, major in Public Administration. Currently, she is taking up a Master of Science in Extension Education. She grew up in a multi-faith and Tri-People community that had been affected by conflicts and has experienced being displaced, leaving their homes for safety several times.
These experiences led her to serve as the project manager of the program for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) under the Mindanao satellite of Balay Rehabilitation Center, Inc. that is based in Midsayap, North Cotabato. BALAY (meaning “house” in Visayan, and short name for the center) works for promotion and protection of human rights, and provide psychosocial services to persons deprived of liberty, victims of organized political violence, and communities of displaced persons due to armed conflicts. It envisions people to cultivate a culture of peace and “contribute to the attainment of human security and peace in the communities that it serves and the entire society.” Thus, interfaith peacebuilding is an inherent component of her program because of its Tri-People context – a context where Christians, Indigenous Peoples (Lumads) and Muslims live together. One of Baidido’s major tasks was to coordinate the Self-Help Group Approach for the Children as Zone of Peace Project (SHA-CZOP) in her home town in Aleosan, North Cotabato. She is used to working with young people.
We welcome Baidido at Hong Kong and hope that she will add a new dimension in our work on peacebuilding activities at ICF.