675 marginalized Moro school children receive bags and rice rations

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December 22, 2025 | 5:42pm

COTABATO CITY — A large group of Moro children from low-income families in two towns received school bags on Sunday, December 21, from the Office of the Vice President. The distribution was facilitated through a public service team led by a member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro Parliament.

Local executives in Kapalawan and Old Kaabacan, two newly established municipalities in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area (SGA) in Cotabato province, told reporters on Monday, December 22, that 675 pupils in Islamic schools in their barangays received school bags during Sunday’s joint outreach activity. The initiative was conducted by employees from the Office of Vice President Sara Duterte and staff of regional lawmaker Kadil Sinolinding Jr.

Physician-ophthalmologist Sinolinding also serves concurrently as the Minister of Health for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

The Islamic schools in Kapalawan and Old Kaabacan, barangays heavily affected by secessionist conflicts from the 1970s to the 1990s, are well known for their active involvement in community programs promoting interfaith solidarity between Muslims and Christians.

Islamic missionaries in the two towns also actively support joint peacebuilding initiatives led by local government units, BARMM agencies, and traditional Moro leaders, complementing the peace and development agenda under Malacañang’s separate agreements with the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Kapalawan and Old Kaabacan are among the eight towns created just last year by the BARMM parliament, all within the Bangsamoro SGA, covering 63 barangays that were originally in the territory of Cotabato province in Administrative Region 12.

Of the 675 school children who received school bags on Sunday, more than 40 are enrolled at Norul Guidid Al-Islamie Incorporated, an Islamic school in Barangay Pedtad, Old Kaabacan.

The barangay chairman of Pedtad, Datu Adan Mantawil, told reporters on Monday that the parents of the school children who each received a school bag rely primarily on small-scale rice and corn farming, as well as fishing in swamps and rivers connected to the 220,000-hectare Ligawasan Delta, to support their families’ needs.

“The books and notebooks of those children won’t get wet anymore during rainy days because they now have leatherette bags to put those provisions in," Mantawail said in the Maguindanaon dialect.

The distribution on Sunday of the school bags for pupils in Islamic schools in the adjoining Kapalawan and Old Kaabakan was preceded by the release last Friday of 25 kilos of rice each to parents of 78 malnourished children in Barangay Kayaga in nearby Kabacan, one of the 17 towns under Cotabato province, by employees of Sinolinding’s office in the BARMM parliament in Cotabato City.

The activity was part of the anti-malnutrition campaign of Sinolinding and BARMM’s chief minister, Abdulrauf Macacua, in mixed Moro and non-Moro communities in Cotabato province and in the Bangsamoro SGA.