The Edge of Innocence: The education of the the Lumad youth
Transforming the experience of displacement into an avenue for unity and determination through the Bakwit School.
Bakwit is a colloquial term derived from the English word “evacuate”. For the Lumad, it means to seek help from a different community and to look for temporary shelter following unexpected circumstances. To bakwit is essential to stay alive, to keep out of harm’s way, and to keep the community together since militarization in their communities has left them with no other choice. Together with their livestock, clothes, and other things needed for their survival, the Lumad evacuate from their ancestral lands to get away from danger — sometimes with no clear direction and no certain destination. The primary concern is to flee from their militarized land as soon as possible.
As Pres. Duterte continue to threaten the Lumad by ordering state forces to bomb their schools, Lumad advocates convened to find a solution for these children to continue their education. In response to these threats, the concept of Bakwit School was born.
The Bakwit School a mobile makeshift school for displaced indigenous children which gives the Lumad children a chance to have access to education despite being away from their communities. They have journeyed to Metro Manila, far away from the mountains they call home. Aside from learning how to read and write, the Lumad children are taught about their indigenous rights, their rights to self-determination, and ancestral lands.
This project was created for my final Visual Journalism requirement at the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University with the support for media fellows at Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
Read the full long-form multimedia article published on Medium.
© 2018, Pau Villanueva. All rights reserved.