THE MATINA BAMBOO FOOTBRIDGE: BUILDING A RESILIENT COMMUNITY The Matina communities in Davao City, Mindanao is crisscrossed by a river and until the end of June 2011 it has to rely on a makeshift bridge for their access to the main street. The makeshift bridge made of bamboo poles tied together was unsafe and got flushed away each time the river flooded. The municipality was in reservation to construct a safer and sturdier bridge due to uncertain legal status of the Arroyo Compound. Hence, through facilitation of the Philippine Alliance and a network of community architects, the community were able to build a 23 meter span bamboo footbridge, the first of its kind in the Philippines.
A COMMUNITY’S STRUGGLE
The Aroyo Compound at Barangay 74-A Matina Crossing is located on the Southwest part of Davao City. Total land area of Arroyo compound is 24 Ha covered by 13 Emancipation Patents (EPs) after the Operation Land Transfer of 1972 (PD 27) that were cancelled by the Supreme Court in 2006. Hence, the tenure status of this land as now is informal. Around 9.8 Ha portion of the land is occupied by the Matina Crossing Federation (Matina Fed), a group composed of three community associations namely, Saint Paul Neighbourhood Associations, Saint Benedict XVI Neighbourhood Association, and Matina Balusong Neighbourhood Association (MABANA). Matina Fed represents 488 urban poor families that consist of food vendors, drivers, construction workers, masseurs, shop-keepers, security-staffs, and other urban professions. Since November 2009 the Matina Fed is a member of the HPFPI (See Box 1). Matina Fed initiates to build a bamboo footbridge that was pronounced during a design workshop at the community on February 2010 with attendance of some community architects from Southeast Asia region. Further, the federation members actively take the lead in all activities related to their footbridge project, including processing papers, permissions and requests to the municipality; procuring materials; mobilizing community people to provide free labour as well as food for the workers during construction; and undertaking workshop preparations in the community.
On December 2010 the communities faced a demolition threat that was purported by a claimant of the land. The demolition did not finish-off and was dubbed as illegal. In fact, the community managed to respond quickly and halt the process. Despite of the rising insecurity, the community was eager to continue to settle and invest on their land through the bamboo footbridge project. One of the Philippine Alliance’s thrusts in its development initiatives is to explore alternative building technologies and materials that are low-cost, community-friendly, environmentally sound, and locally available – i.e. technologies that can easily be managed, handled-by and transferred to the communities. Globally, there is also an increasingly growing appreciation for bamboo as an environmental-friendly and