Non-profit peace-advocacy swimming training facility up

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — There is a big peace-advocacy group that had set up in a hinterland town a swimming pool for honing potential young swimmers from the Muslim, Christian and indigenous communities into athletes as a showcase of religious and cultural solidarity in sports.

Young neophyte swimmers with different religious and tribal identities saw action last weekend at the newly established Villa Elena Swimmers Training Center, or VESTC, in Arakan town in Cotabato province, an event that capped off its inauguration.

The facility was together established by a peace activist in the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, the physician Kadil Sinolinding Jr., relatives, Filipino supporters abroad, retired government executives and teachers and other individuals in Central Mindanao helping push the peacebuilding activities of their local government units forward.

Sinolinding said on Wednesday that the cross-section initiati0ve is part of their group’s support for the Bangsamoro government and Malacañang’s peace process, meant to address poverty and underdevelopment in southern towns and provinces badly affected by decades of secessionist conflicts.

Sinolinding, local officials and peace advocates in Arakan together launched the VESTC, the first of its kind in Region 12 that has 63 Bangsamoro barangays in different towns in Cotabato.

Sinolinding said they shall also organize teams of potential young Moro swimmers from the 63 barangays, now grouped together as the Special Geographic Area-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Education officials in the Bangsamoro government and members of the regional parliament representing the ethnic indigenous non-Moro sectors, among them the Teduray tribal leader Froilyn Tenorio Mendoza, said on Wednesday that they shall support efforts to develop young members of the IP community into swimmers who can compete in competitions outside of the autonomous region.

“Besides that, combining Muslims, Christians and IPs in swimming lessons can build religious and cultural understanding among them and, in effect, they will mature together as peace advocates like us,” Mendoza said.