“The people of Cotabato and the whole of Mindanao are highly grateful to KC for using her sway as a celebrity to help address widespread hunger and the conflict-induced dislodgment of people,” Taliño-Mendoza said. She urged donors to “abundantly support” KC’s humanitarian activities. In her capacity as the United Nations World Food Programme’s Philippine ambassador against hunger, KC has visited the towns of Midsayap and Pikit, both in TaliñoMendoza’s district.
During her visits, KC, 24, extended food aid to children in a bid to check malnutrition and boost school attendance. An actress, singer, model, stage actor and video performance artist, KC is the only daughter of Gabby Concepcion and Sharon Senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan.
“KC has definitely helped to raise hope, and inspire others to do their share in easing hunger in Mindanao,” Taliño-Mendoza said. Hunger, internal displacement and armed conflict all form part of a vicious cycle, according to the Cotabato lawmaker.
According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), the Philippines had the largest number of “conflict-induced” newly internally displaced people in 2008. The IDMC said that last year, some 600,000 people fled fighting between the Philippine military and rebel groups in Mindanao. They accounted for 13 percent of the 4.6 million newly internally displaced people around the world in 2008. Besides the Philippines, the IDMC also noted massive new internal displacements in Sudan, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and India.
The IDMC is a unit of the Oslo-based Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent, humanitarian non-governmental organization providing aid, protection and durable solutions to refugees and internally displaced
On, June 30, 2010, Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III was sworn in as the 15th president of the Republic of the Philippines. Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales and Jesuit Fr. Catalino Arevalo, a close friend of the Aquinos, who held the bible, swore in the only son of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and former president Corazon Cojuangco Aquino. To most Filipinos, this day was very memorable because it symbolizes the beginning of a new hope for the country, the hope of a clean and honest government.
