A key learning for ESSC as it continues to work in Mindanao is the need to engage with the youth, especially young adults in lumad [1] communities, if stability and sustainability are to be sought for their cultures, their environment, and their resources.

In the 2006 movie El laberinto del fauno by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro, he juxtaposed a real world with a fantasy world within an overgrown and abandoned labyrinth where a fantasy creature (El Fauno) mesmerized a young girl. In the Philippines, we are paralyzed, not mesmerized, by a labyrinthine overgrowth of water-related agencies and structure with specific mandates in relation to water that do not relate to the exigencies of appropriate water governance.