Biosketch of MP Engr. Aida M. Silongan, MAPD

With over three decades of being a public servant, MP Engr. Aida Macalimpas Silongan offers a unique blend of vision, leadership, knowledge, and faith, Engr. Silongan became one of the few Bangsamoro women who has taken a seat in the Bangsamoro Parliament. She is also the current Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology in the Bangsamoro Region.

”Ate Aids”as what her colleagues fondly call her, started her humble beginnings at the province of Matalam, North Cotabato. She persevered to become a successful civil engineer, striving her way in college through academic scholarship.

Following her career in the engineering field, she decided to shift path and submit herself to work for the cause of the Bangsamoro, Jihad fi Sabilillah. She left working as an engineering contractor and started volunteering to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) specifically to its women sector, the Social Welfare Committee (SWC). Her voluntary works go beyond what is expected of her and successfully organize 9 sub-committees both in mainland and island regions in the Bangsamoro homeland. Eventually, she became the Executive Secretary of the SWC-MILF up to now.

In her continuing efforts to serve the Bangsamoro communities, she was designated as the first and only woman member of the Board of Directors of the Bangsamoro Development Agency (BDA), the development arm of the MILF. She also managed development projects of BDA where she worked as a Program Manager for the Mindanao Trust Fund-Reconstruction and Development Program (MTF-RPD) in partnership with the World Bank. During her time, BDA was awarded for its 0% corruption rate as validated by the international procurement watch and documented in the book entitled, “Even Pigs Can Fly”.

After then, she became the Program Management Officer for Community Development for Conflict-Affected Areas in Mindanao (CD-CAAM) in partnership with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) that provided livelihood programs to Bangsamoro communities thorugh organic farming, livelihood sustainability, and infrastracture. Those projects implemented become the roads in bridging and promoting peace and development in the Bangsamoro.

Shortly after the projects were done, she and her women colleagues decided to create their own NGO and became the CEO of Al-Amanah Humanitarian Development Services Inc., an NGO that catered to the vulnerable sector in the Bangsamoro, mostly women and children. It is also a pioneering organization in the advocacy of the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL). Pushing the then BBl (now BOL), she became the lead convenor of the Women’s Organization Movement of Bangsamoro (WOMB) federation of 30 women organizations in different  geographic locations in Mindanao.