Central Mindanao radio station wins CMMA award

KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines - Officials on Tuesday lauded Central Mindanao’s Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation (NDBC) for having bagged another Catholic Mass Media Award (CMMA) citation for its weekly peace advocacy special segment.

The “Bida Specials” of NDBC, which operates six radio stations in Central Mindanao, was voted from among more than 800 entries, as the best business feature and news during the 37th awards rite of the CMMA last November 6 in Metro Manila.

The Bida Specials focuses on propagation of the culture of peace and preservation of the unique identities of Mindanao’s tri-people, comprised of Muslim, Christian and Lumad folks.

The entry submitted by the NDBC to the CMMA contest was all about the biodiversity of the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta and how ethnic Maguindanaon women in nearby Gen. S.K. Pendatun are earning extra income from handicrafts using water hyacinths harvested from vast swaths of marshes that connect to the delta.

The delta, located at the tri-boundaries of the adjoining North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces, reputedly has the biggest deposit of natural gas all throughout Asia.

“We share with the happiness of the NDBC people for having won a CMMA award. This station has actively been helping push forward the Mindanao peace process through its peace journalism practices,” said Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The NDBC, which has been operating since the 1950s, is owned by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the congregation where Orlando Cardinal Quevedo belong.

Quevedo and many of his colleagues are engaged in various peace-building activities in underdeveloped Moro communities in Region 12 and in ARMM.

Ariel Layson, barangay chair of Remfes in North Upi town in Maguindanao, said he and his ethnic Teduray constituents are learning much from the peace-building insights regularly imparted to the public by the NDBC.

The main producer of the Bida Specials, Malu Cadelina-Manar, is a multi-awarded journalist who is popular for her involvement in various activities protecting human rights in communities reached by NDBC’s daily broadcasts.

Senior officials of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division (ID) in Camp Siongco in Maguindanao said they have actively been listening to the special features of the NDBC stations in the cities of Koronadal, Kidapawan and Cotabato.

“Peace and conflict-sensitive reporting is so important in the propagation of peace among Muslims and Christians and Lumad folks,” said Col. Dickson Hermoso, inspector-general of 6th ID.