ICC Iligan City (7 November) -- The Department of Education (DepEd), region 10, will continue to promote peace education to develop a culture of peace among school children who will eventually become adults in the community.

This was stressed by Regional Director Esrella Abid-Babano of DepEd 10 who said peace education is a flagship program of the department which could be taught not only inside but also outside the classrooms.

"Under this program, we try to consider the four (4) pillars of learning: learning to learn, learning to do, learning to give and learning to live together, thus, we came up with the Northern Mindanao Peace Village (NMPV) for the youth," Babano explained

She said the NMPV gives the youth a chance to learn one of the components, which is to live together as they are given opportunity to share their experiences, ideas and insights from within the participants belonging to different ethnic groups and religion.

Meanwhile, Babano said the NMPV is an annual activity which DepEd-10 sees as a very important component of the Peace Education Program for the pupils and students to apply what they learned through the different activities inside the peace village.

These activities include the peace learning hubs, peace art/peace wall, peace reflections, celebrating cultural diversity and "kids say no to guns", among others.

On the other hand, she said this year's NMPV was hosted by the Lanao del Norte Schools Division at the Mindanao Civic Center, in Tubod, LDN's capital town last Oct. 27-30.

The 4th annual NMPV activity was successfully attended by some 420 grade school and high school students from the region.