Julie Titone
Director of Communications

Once, when he was describing a thorny ethical question posed by a teacher, my son scrunched his brow and said, “It makes my head hurt!” I felt a similar frustration as I tried to absorb the contents of several single-spaced pages, handed to me by Myla Leguro, describing the decades-long conflict on the Philippine island of Mindanao. The tangled roots of the struggle go back four centuries. Since the 1970s, government clashes with both Muslim rebels and communist groups have left 120,000 people dead, 1.5 million displaced, 71 percent living in poverty. Roads and schools lie in ruins. Drug trafficking thrives. Caught in the madness are 12 million Christians, 4 million Muslims and 2 million indigenous people — “the tri-people,” as Myla calls them.

Myla represents the flip side of the Mindanao conflict. In the face of its complexity, she maintains a single-minded determination to bring peace to her lush homeland. She is the Peace and Reconciliation Program manager for Catholic Relief Services in Davao City. Among her many responsibilities is directing the Mindanao Peace Institute (MPI), which has a growing reputation as a place to learn about effective, grassroots peacebuilding.

As the first person to receive a Kroc Institute visiting fellowship designated for employees of Catholic Relief Services, Myla spent part of the spring semester at Notre Dame. She brought with her a tropical smile, calm self-confidence, and a strong work ethic. Her main fellowship project was to reflect upon, and write about, a decade of peacebuilding work in the Philippines. She also lectured on the role of women in peacebuilding, addressed the undergraduate peace conference, and shared her experiences with graduate students in a course on the management of nongovernmental organizations.

Besides its annual peacebuilding workshops that have drawn 900 people from 30 countries, MPI has an ongoing training program for grassroots leaders in Mindanao. MPI has 10 staff members, and is collectively managed by Catholic Relief Services, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. Myla’s goal is for the institute to be independent. That would allow it to expand services, get its own building, and eventually open centers outside of Mindanao.

One sign that the world has taken notice of Myla’s work was her inclusion in a group of 1,000 women nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. She is known for her management and evaluation skills. But what most impresses me most is her understanding of human relationships. That surely must be the basis of successful conflict transformation, “true north” on the peacebuilder’s compass. During a long conversation with Myla, I gleaned lessons about the value of maintaining focus in order to meet our goals, building trust with others, following through with commitments, and using power responsibly.

Focus. “We’ve always been very clear about our vision and mission,” Myla said. “MPI is for grassroots peace practitioners. That has helped us in defining our courses, in designing our services. We don’t want to be academic.”

Trust. When Catholic Relief Services turned its attention to peace and justice issues in the 1990s, Mindanao’s non-Christians were leery of its motives. But Myla and her colleagues found help in allaying those fears. “We were lucky to have Muslim partners who worked with us in the initial stages of the program, who became our champions. They explained in their own community what we were about as an organization. Then we did community visits. Once you are there, more people know you and understand you. Then you have trust.”

Follow-up. MPI doesn’t just train people in peacebuilding techniques. It provides support once they get home, so they can apply their knowledge to the needs of their communities — arranging dialogues, perhaps, or setting up conflict resolution mechanisms. “My dream is for MPI to become irrelevant — not because we’re going to achieve peace, but because we’ve trained people to do their work.”

Power. Peace practitioners wield power because they bring money and expertise into a community. Myla often reflects on MPI’s influence, and her desire that it not be dominant. She encourages grassroots peacebuilders to claim power in trying to change their communities. She encourages MPI staffers to see themselves as mentors, facilitators, bridge builders or companions, depending on local needs.

Myla uses another role to describe her work to her five-year-old daughter. “I tell her I am a peace teacher. I teach people how they can live together, how they have the capacity to decide on their own how to live together.”

Myla began her career doing development work. Her academic training was in neither education nor peace studies. She told me, with a laugh, that she studied agriculture. That seems fitting, given her ultimate career sowing seeds of peace.