The current partnership between ESSC and Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) was further enhanced when 17 of AdDU's faculty and staff undertook an exploratory visit to Sitio Bendum, Malaybalay, Bukidnon last 9 to 12 April 2011.

The visit provided an opportunity to explore various areas of collaborative engagement between ESSC and AdDU in areas of Indigenous Peoples education, renewable energy, hydrological instrumentation for watershed modeling, geomatics applications, and migration.

Most of these convergence areas are within the ongoing Belgian CUD-funded EPaM (Establishing Strategic Partnerships In Research To Strengthen Local Governance In Land And Water Management Towards Greater Human Security In Mindanao) project, of which AdDU is an active local partner university.

The EPaM project focuses on building capacity of local stakeholders by strengthening research collaboration in water and land use management among academic and similar institutions.

AdDU is currently developing a Masters of Tropical Risk Management (MTRIM) degree with a major in Climate Change Adaptation through its newly established Tropical Institute for Climate Studies (TropICS). The EPAM project is supporting the MTRIM program through the establishment of geomatics capability (hardware and training) for the university. With further collaboration, the intention is to develop formal geomatics courses that will be required in the MTRIM program.

The interest in expanding and deepening the areas of collaboration grew after a series of meetings between the two institutions in the early half of this year. ESSC had earlier been considering a long-time request from AdDU to provide training in geomatics to help jumpstart the establishment of geomatics capacity in the university. ESSC responded by expanding its local partnership to include AdDU in its next CUD project bid, which kicked off in June of last year.

Although the meager resources available only allowed the establishment of a basic geomatics laboratory in AdDU, this did not limit them in thinking big. It has now allowed AdDU to further develop full-blown geomatics courses (basic and advanced) that will be offered to its MTRIM graduate students. This trip to Bendum included a GPS field familiarization activity and introductory geomatics seminar for TropICS faculty who will undergo training in geomatics in the coming months.

The opportunity to visit Bendum allowed the AdDU community to explore other areas of ESSC's work where there can be meaningful collaboration such as Indigenous Peoples education and school management through the establishment of a distance-learning program for BS Education for teachers in the Apu Palamguwan Cultural Education Center (APC) in Bendum. APC runs an upland elementary school for Indigenous Peoples and actively promotes the use of multi-lingual education.

The engineering contingent of the group expressed interest in the newly established renewable energy system in Bendum, focusing on sustainability measures, which is a great need for many community-scale hydroelectric installations in Mindanao.

Another area of growing collaboration is in field instrumentation, particularly in the area of real-time monitoring of hydrological and climatic parameters in watersheds (currently with no gauges) in Mindanao for watershed modeling and early warning.

ESSC will be installing a network of telemetric weather and stream gauging stations in the Upper Pulangi Watershed and has commissioned the AdDU College of Engineering to provide the instrumentation, which has a working prototype installed in the Davao River Basin.

Finally, the AdDU Migration Center also sent its own participants who were able to identify further areas of research, looking at monitoring the whereabouts of children who had graduated from the APC since its early beginnings, as well as tracing movements of upland indigenous family groups in the Pantaron Range from where the Pulangi begins. There are also other emerging engagements with current Belgian partners in the field of migration where the Center can be engaged.