Davao City is buzzing with positive energy powered by a new generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. There is an emerging local movement of diverse Davaoeños collaborating and harnessing their relative strengths and ideas to innovate for change.
We have a vibrant arts and cultural heritage community as well as a robust startup, inventors and innovators community that are connecting with local peacebuilders to innovate for peace.
Davao City’s legendary women’s movement is reinvigorated to sustain what we have built that earned for our city the Galing Pook recognition for outstanding gender and development (GAD) program. The Davao Women Leaders Forum (DaWoLF), who are composed of the trailblazing feminists who drafted our landmark ordinance, the Women Development Code in 1997, are engaging young women leaders to innovate for gender equality.
Women in media are also leading the local innovation push in journalism, making sure that as we face technological disruption, journalists remain engaged with audiences and promote ethical practices. Our Mindanao Times editor-in-chief, Amalia Bandiola-Cabusao, is organizing local media practitioners and mentoring young reporters on mainstreaming gender and peace in their reporting and storytelling.
This innovation push is being led and coordinated by the newly created Davao City Inventions and Innovations Center (DCIIC). This center is created by City Ordinance No. 0546-21 championed by Councilor Pilar C. Braga and signed into law by then Mayor Sara Z. Duterte on May 7, 2021.
The center is governed by a council that is chaired by the City Mayor and its members are composed of government and nongovernment representatives involved in innovation. The secretariat is the Davao City Investment Promotions Center (DCIPC). Since it is already tasked to implement our city’s “Invest in Davao” program, it will just integrate the city’s support for local inventions and innovations as well.
Consultation workshops participated in by various stakeholders are being conducted as part of the process of creating the Davao City Innovations Roadmap. And the city wants a diversity of participants so everybody is included in the innovation push.
In drafting the roadmap, we first determined why we are innovating in the first place and for whose benefit. So we answered three questions to find our purpose: (1) What is important to us and why? (Values); (2) What are we good at? (Strengths); and (3) How could our city and the world be improved? (Contribution)
These are what came out: (1) Cherished Davaoeño values: cooperation, discipline, inclusivity, resourcefulness, peace; (2) Davao City’s strengths: diversity, peace and order, natural resources, food basket, local government support, concerned citizens, creativity; (3) Davao City’s contribution to the world: trailblazing legislation and programs, model for community collaboration, model for citizens’ participation in governance.
Based on the intersection of our values, strengths, and contribution, Davao City’s purpose for innovation is this: “We will innovate to sustain what we have built, promote a culture of creativity and inclusivity, and improve the quality of life of all Davaoeños.”
The stakeholders also painted a picture of what an innovative Davao City looks like and they described a “green, smart, and connected Davao City with lots of open spaces where people can come together and share.”
They want a fully digital system with seamless and transparent government transactions. They want to see more public investments in research and development; local entrepreneurship; and emerging technologies.
They want a diverse, vibrant, and dynamic culture that is open and collaborative; forward-thinking yet values cultural heritage. They want happy and healthy people and environment powered by active citizens’ participation in governance and driven by thriving local businesses.
They identified three factors critical for Davao City’s innovation: (1) inclusive and collaborative citizens; (2) strong local government policy support; and (3) multicultural and cosmopolitan ecosystem.
They also identified three areas of focus Davao City should invest in for the next three years: (1) Food and Agribusiness; (2) Health of the People and the Planet; and (3) Emerging Technologies.
Davao City has always been a frontier town of pioneers and trailblazers. We survived World War II. We transformed the “Killing Fields of Asia” into one of the “Most Livable Cities in Asia” in just a decade. From being home to one of the longest insurgencies in the world and the laboratory of the urban guerrilla warfare of the New People’s Army (NPA), the national government has now declared our city “insurgency-free.”
We have achieved what is considered negative peace or the “absence of violence or fear of violence.” It is merely the absence of war.
As Davao City innovates for the 21st century, it is based on a foundational framework for sustainable, positive peace. The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) defines positive peace as “the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.” It creates the “optimal environment for human potential to flourish.”
It provides the framework to understand and then address the multiple and complex challenges communities face. Positive peace is transformational because it is a cross-cutting factor for progress, making it easier for businesses to sell; entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists to innovate; individuals to create and produce; and governments to effectively regulate.
Positive peace promotes better economic outcomes, measures of well-being, and levels of inclusiveness and environmental performance.
That is why the positive peace framework is being adopted by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) to be mainstreamed in local governments all over the country. Leading its implementation is the Local Government Academy (LGA) in partnership with the Davao-based Kahayag Foundation.
Innovating for peace is another trailblazing program starting in Davao City and being led by its empowered and engaged citizens, the secret to our city’s success. It is a broad, multi-sectoral movement united in urging all Davaoeños: “Davao City, Mag-Innovate Ta!”
