Silingang Dapit sa Sidlakang Mindanao (SILDAP) - Southeastern Mindanao, Inc.

Introduction 

Silingang Dapit sa Sidlakang Mindanao (SILDAP) - Southeastern Mindanao, Inc. is a local NGO based in Davao in the Southeastern Philippines. One of the pioneering NGOs that has served the indigenous communities for the past 39 years, it has developed its expertise in developing modules that are sensitive and culturally appropriate for indigenous communities and socio-economic projects that integrate customary sustainable use. With the implementation of the Philippine Department of Education on indigenization of the curriculum (or Indigenous Peoples Education), popularly known as IPEd, SILDAP started to turn over some of the indigenous people’s primary schools that it helped organize. 

Vision

SILDAP envisions a society where the Indigenous Peoples live in their traditional territory with abundant life, sustainable development, and self-governed based on their indigenous knowledge systems and practices. 

Mission

SILDAP is a service institution that facilitates the process of improving the capacity of the Indigenous Peoples to revive their indigenous knowledge systems and practices and to develop a self-governing and self-sustaining IP territory (based on their customary laws).

Goals

1. Increased income and food sufficiency level of the Indigenous Peoples families; 
2. Restored, conserved, and developed the resources within the IP territories; and 
3. Revived the indigenous knowledge systems and practices of the IP communities.

As a member of the indigenous peoples’ global partnership, SILDAP is involved in piloting the Indigenous Peoples  Sustainable Self-Determined Development (IPSSDD) and the Community-Based Monitoring and Information Systems (CBMIS) in two communities in Davao de Oro (formerly Compostela Valley). Participatory mapping and biodiversity resource inventory are being undertaken in various stages by trained community mappers composed of indigenous men, women, and youth. SILDAP is also engaged in livelihood development. They have assisted communities in setting up community enterprises that are underpinned by cultural values of indigenous peoples: honesty, fairness, and equity, which make them distinct from other peoples organization. These efforts helped, to large extent, in helping indigenous communities recover from the destruction of Typhoon Pablo (internationally known as Bhopa) in 2012.