Light on the crossroad

Twenty-three years ago, Eufemia “Femme” Tobias Munn helped found Shalom Science Institute, a non-profit Christian school, in her hometown of Balabagan, a Muslim-dominated area in Lanao del Sur. Her grandparents had moved there in the 1930s to respond to a request for Christians to show Muslims how to farm. Balabagan is 40 percent Christian and 60 percent Muslims.

The school started in 1995 as a day care center for preschool children, in 1995 followed by succeeding grades as requested by parents and community supporters. The first elementary commencement was in 2004 and from that year to 2016, 359 children had graduated from the SSI elementary school. Grades 7-10 were added in 2010 and SSI had two high school graduation – in 2014 and 2015. High school now includes the 11th and 12th grades.

Eufemia said in an interview that the school “serves as a bridge between Christians and Muslims across cultural and religious barriers. The program promotes understanding, peace and harmony. Christians and Muslims play and study together. We can’t tell which is which. School begins with prayer. Muslims hold their hands up and out, and Christians put their palms together.”

“We do not teach religion but teach core values as part of education. Classes have fewer than 30 students, compared to 50 to 70 in public schools.”

When a group of Christian clergy called on the mayor to engage in a Christian-Muslim dialogue, he said, “Dialogue is good, but it is all words. What we want Christians to do for us is to show us a better way to improve our lives, like what Shalom School is doing in offering quality education to our children. That is why many Muslim students are enrolled in Shalom School.”

Eufemia studied business and accounting at Silliman University in Dumaguete City, then moved to the United States after she married American missionary Merton Munn. She earned her master in education, principal’s and teacher’s credentials at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. After many years of teaching, she retired as principal of Blair Elementary School on Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane. 

After Merton died in 1955, she returned to the Philippines, seeking what Christ wanted her to do. She decided to help build and develop Shalom Science Institute, which started as two rooms in a thatched-roof, cement floor former Sunday School building. There were not enough funds for classrooms or the teacher’s salary from parents’ donations. She started a school library with books donated from the United States. She taught in Qingdao International School in China and Copiapo, Chile for Phelps Dodge as a teacher in order to help raise funds for SSI. Her efforts provided for more classrooms, computer labs, computers and personnel, and her next dream was to help build a health clinic. Proceeds from her memoir, “Bridging the Gap Between Christians and Muslims,” also went to the school.

SSI is served by a 15-member board of trustees and administrative officials including a president, executive vice president, and a principal. It was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission when it attained its high school status in 2010. Eufemia served as voluntary president.

SSI is relegated to DepEd’s Tract 3 – Vocational/Livelihood due to the fact that not all teachers have teaching licenses. This drastic change was in SSI’s favor, as it forced SSI to evaluate programs and implement those that can realistically prepare students for a better future. “We decided to start agri-business,” said Eufemia. She was in a quandary. “How? Where? What? Who?”

The answer came – in the person of Dr. Frank Gorrez, a retired international agronomist, who volunteered to spearhead SSI’s agri-business project. His expansive experience as consultant to World Bank, the UN, UNFAO, USAID, and church organizations in 16 countries for 45 years served SSI‘s and the agriculture community much needed new ideas.

Frank had read about SSI in Eufemia’s Linkedin Profile and the convergence of his thought to be of service and SSI’s need for help met in his book, “Grow Paddy Rice Successfully.” What SSI would ultimately become is a “Light in the Crossroad” of DepEd’s education overhaul, specifically for Tract 3 senior high schools, said Eufemia.

In her report, Eufemia said four months after Frank entered the scene, she stood in awe “gazing at a green landscape of rice and vegetables on a corner lot across the street from SSI; what four months ago was a pasture land, dump site, and abaca dryer has become the ‘talk of the town’ – a visible testimony to the miracle of planting seeds and now, a bountiful harvest of rice and vegetables.”

SSI’s Rice and Vegetable Garden (RVG) has become the “Light in the Crossroad” whose beam “has reached far and wide and many a curious person look in amazement and admire. RVG speaks volumes for what it has become through growing different varieties of rainfed rice and multi-cropping of vegetables, she said.

Philippine Rice Research Institute donated different varieties of rainfed rice seeds to test and evaluate the best suited for the SSI area. The choice varieties produced plenty of seeds, some of which were given to the 84 Muslim farmers in Kapatagan LGU, a partner of SSI. 

“What is very interesting is the idea of multi-cropping, thus RVG remains green throughout the year all the time,” wrote Eufemia. RVG has also started planting corn, radish, pechay, kalabasa, string and winged beans, tomatoes, green chili, ampalaya. Multi-cropping is skillfully crafted by Dr. Frank. In a sort few months, donations poured in. “His contribution to SSI, the community, and beyond is measureless. What a blessing he is!” 

The first to lend assistance to RVG was Landbank and Hofer Dev. Corp, which augmented the SSI library and made it into a Landbank Library, the first in ARMM.

In April-May 2017 in the midst of the ongoing Marawi war, Mayor Nhazruddin Maglangit, Al Hadj with his agricultural staff in Kapatagan municipality, Lanao del Sur, visited SSI and invited Frank to extend the SSI-3TS Development Program Assistance to 15 barangays of Kapatagan, under his administrative jurisdiction. There Frank, then SSI consultant and Board of Trustees member, conducted workshops and distributed free rice seeds to 84 farmers. Palay seeds were harvested from SSI’s Rice and Vegetable Garden. SSI felt proud to assist the farmers by giving them free seeds. Then Frank conducted a seminar-workshop in the municipality of Tajah Buayan, Maguindanao under the sponsorship of Gawad Kalinga/Konomics, on March 22-24 this year. 

Reported Eufemia: “Shalom Science Institute’s RVG is bridging the gap between Christians and Muslims through students’ participation, community awareness, free distribution of palay and vegetable seeds. We at SSI are very fortunate and grateful to Frank Gorrez, who, like a stone dropped in a pond, ripples of his work are reaching out to the needy and to a local plantation owner.”

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People whose lives were touched by Femme’s generous and caring spirit are saddened by the news that she passed away at home on June 22 in Medical Lake, WA.

Eufemia, who was born in Itil, Balabagan, Lanao del Sur on Nov. 23, 1938, graduated from Southeastern Institute in Padada, Davao, and completed her BBA at Silliman University.

She was preceded in death by her husband Mert; her brothers Virgilio, Constancio, Jeremias, Josue, and Abraham and sister Jovencia. She is lovingly remembered by her sisters Remedios, Josephine, Rachel, and Fely; brother Benjamin, and a very large extended family.

According to Dr. Frank Gorrez, the international agricultural specialist who turned SSI into a model agri-preneurship project, said  Femme was planning to hold a benefit concert in Balabagan this Christmas.

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