The Sama Bajau, an itinerant sea-based tribe, is one of the most marginalized and vulnerable groups in the Philippines. In Surigao City, the Indigenous group has lived in informal settlements for decades, usually in makeshift stilt houses made from light materials over shallow coastal waters. Their traditional form of housing makes them particularly vulnerable to disasters, such as Typhoon Rai, which devastated many parts of Surigao, causing massive displacement in 2021.
According to Chieftain Dahila Araman, who serves as the traditional leader of the community, their lack of access to basic amenities and services like education and healthcare, and the discrimination they experience make them feel helpless and insecure.
“People think that we are unsanitary and that we lack intelligence. No one even wants to hire us to work for them,” Araman said.
To empower the Sama Bajau, "Localize to Realize: Accelerating the Sustainable Development Goals (L2R SDG)", a joint programme implemented by the UN-Habitat and UN Women, gives the community critical knowledge about sustainable development, as well as a voice in decision-making processes to address their lack of access to basic services and amenities. The programme, which the Joint SDG Fund supports, preserves the Sama Bajau’s unique cultural identity and traditions, and responds to their specific needs and aspirations.
Regular dialogues are conducted between the community and government agencies, particularly the Planning Office of Surigao City, as part of the planning and development process.
The L2R SDG team and the local government unit (LGU) of Surigao City prioritize critical services for the Indigenous group, particularly access to housing, livelihoods and education through a dedicated knowledge center. With this support, community members have proactively engaged in the preparation of their respective local development plans, have been consulted regularly by the LGU through their recognized leaders, and are also now expected to participate in the Voluntary Local Review, the reporting of progress on the SDGs at the sub-national level.
To enhance the knowledge of the Sama Bajau community, as well as other vulnerable informal settler families (ISFs) in the area, the joint programme organized seminars and trainings on identifying the SDGs that they need to focus on to jumpstart their recovery and improve their living conditions.
Sama Bajau families and children join SDG learning sessions under the ‘Localize to Realize’ joint programme, gaining tools to shape their future and strengthen community resilience. Photo: UN-Habitat and UN Women
Another component of the L2R SDG project is the FACES programme, locally adapted as Family Actions for Children and their Environments in Surigao. The initiative empowers parents, especially mothers, to take the lead in achieving the SDGs through the personal development and progress made by their children.
Families were oriented on the Child SDG Progress Report Card, which presents the SDGs in child-level indicators. These are monitored regularly to improve progress on the indicators and achieve the child SDGs vis-à-vis the baseline or the starting point and condition of the child at the very beginning of the activity.
A young Sama Bajau girl tracks her progress on the SDG FACES Report Card—learning how her everyday actions contribute to a better future for herself, her family, and her community. Photo: UN-Habitat and UN Women
The Report Card is translated into the Bajau and Surigaonon languages so mothers can regularly monitor their child’s SDG targets and act on them with support from the community and city partners. Currently, 40 Bajau children and 40 children from the ISFs in the host community have developed their respective report cards.
To help in the monitoring of the family SDGs, a mobile application was developed to digitize the Report Card. Seventeen Bajau and 16 ISF families that have their own phones were oriented on the use of the digital tool and are now using the application with assistance from youth leaders in the community. The digital tool produces a FACES SDG dashboard for the participating families every month. The families, especially the young people in the community, have enthusiastically embraced the tool because of its interactive features. It has also opened their awareness to other government services that could be accessed through the e-governance portal.
Marilou Catdula, a mother of three teenage girls, is an active participant in the FACES program. Her youngest is one of the children whose SDGs are being monitored. She actively engages in activities and contributes her ideas to the programme because she wants a better future for her children. Her middle child, who is more familiar with using the phone for monitoring, has also been helping her and other mothers in their community.
Empowering vulnerable groups such as the Sama Bajau and ISFs in integrating the SDGs into their daily lives and communities unleashes the transformative power of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in harnessing the potentials of even the most vulnerable as development partners in finding homegrown local solutions to overcome poverty and inequality and ensure that no one is left behind in pursuing a more sustainable future.
Note:
All joint programmes of the Joint SDG Fund are led by UN Resident Coordinators and implemented by the agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations development system. With sincere appreciation for the contributions from the European Union and Governments of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and our private sector funding partners, for a transformative movement towards achieving the SDGs by 2030.
