On October 8, 2012 Marilou Diaz Abaya, the famous film director passed away living the legacy of a leader able to dream peace and work for peace. She is well known for her famous films, but especially for “ Bagong Buwan” a film with Cesar Montano as major actor presenting the tragic effects of the Mindanao conflict. She became friend and member of the Silsilah Dialogue Movement when she discovered the mission of Dialogue and peace of Silsilah in Mindanao. As active member of Silsilah, she was many times in Zamboanga City inspiring the Movement to give more attention to media and social media. One of the testimonies that well express her spirit is a message written to Fr. Sebastiano D’Ambra, the founder of Silsilah Dialogue Movement. She wrote: “ Together, let us dream of peace and let us each waking day be an occasion to say yes….., let us dream, let us hope, let us act together….” With this spirit, Marilou Abaya inspired Silsilah in many ways. Among the visible sign is the Media Center for Dialogue and Peace, in Harmony Village. She encouraged to start it and now this center is dedicated to her.
Another point of inspiration that Silsilah still DREAMS to implement fully is the group that she initiated with the youth in 2009, called YOUTH IN MEDIA FOR DIALOGUE AND PEACE (YMDP). This group was able to inspire many young Christian and Muslim students at the beginning although after some years it was not very active. Today in the spirit of the tenth (10th) year of that beginning of the YMDP Silsilah is restarting it with some Muslim and Christian youths active members in SILPEACE ( Silsilah Peace), the Silsilah program for the youth. With this determination few of them accepted the challenge of Silsilah to restart again willing to invite again the first group of the YMDP, many of them already committed in local and national media, radio and televisions. Together with other students of different schools and universities who have the skills and passion to use media for dialogue and peace are invited to move in this direction. They are determined to restart again challenged by some events: good and bad, but at the end inspiring and challenging. The first is the reality of the spread of social media that find youth among the most active in using it. This reality is challenging and alarming at the same time. Many young people today are attracted by ideologies and groups who promote on media and social media materialism and consumerism, others promote ideologies that leads to radical violence in the name of a wrong understanding of their religion. The siege of Marawi is one of the most clear signs of this alarming situation. This reality urges Silsilah to make an extra effort to do more to promote dialogue and peace through media. We have already many good efforts done in this direction and now we are happy to announce our determination to restart the group initiated by Marilou Abaya ten years ago.
There are also positive signs that inspire us to move in this direction. In a recent message of Pope Francis at the beginning of the synod for the youth, a big gathering of the Church focusing on the YOUTH , the Pope said: “…renew the ability to dream and hope for infecting young people” . He explained what kind of “infection” we have to inject saying: “ …the ability to anoint our young people with the gift of prophecy and vision….be a memory capable of enkindling our hearts and of discerning the way of the Spirit”.
At the same time a new challenge for the youth comes from the Catholic Church in the Philippines in this time of preparation for the “special year of the youth” that will be launched in 2019 in preparation to the 2021 event in celebrating the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines.
Let us take all the opportunities and programs that we have on the part of many public and private schools and sectors among Christians, Muslims and other groups to work together for the youth to help them dream together as Marilou Abaya said, to Dream Peace .
Soon, the first new group of Youth in Media for Dialogue and Peace (YMDP) selected by different schools and universities in Zamboanga will meet to start this new program of the YMDP. We hope that this can be a new inspiration for groups and institutions to do something similar. There are many among young people with lots of skills to use media. We have to approach them and help them to dream dialogue and peace with us.