About me
John Piermont Montilla is currently the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the DSWD Field Office 6. As a male survivor of violence, Johnpierre has extensive experience working on human rights specializing on male victims of human rights abuses. He has developed numerous victim-centered and survivor-driven initiatives.

His work has been an outcome of being a government beneficiary where he served as a Pag-asa Youth Association President and Youth Service Provider in Western Visayas and as Feed the Hungry recipient of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas which enabled him to complete his college education at the West Visayas State University.

Prior to coming back to the DSWD, he held the position Executive Director at the Kabataang Gabay sa Positibong Pamumuhay (KGPP), the most awarded grassroots movement in the Philippines. Under his leadership, the group was a two-time national TAYO awardee by the National Youth Commission in 2003 and 2008, cited by the International Youth Foundation as an International best Practice in 2005 for its Program for At-risk Youth under the Social Technology Unit of the DSWD and by UNAIDS in 2010 for its good practice in social entrepreneurship. The group is also a 4-time recipient of the Global Village Program of the International AIDS Conference (2008 Mexico, 2010 Vienna, 2012 Washington DC, and 2014 Melbourne). It is also a 2-time recipient of the Starbucks Shared Planet Youth Action Grants for health and development initiatives in 2008 & 2012. Its on-going initiative for male victims of trafficking and recovering drug addicts, the River of Life Initiatives (ROLi) was selected by the World Health Organization as one of the 2014 Case Study of Good Practice.

Johnpierre still hold a key leadership role with KGPP as its National Council President and chief mentor of it's affiliate organization, the Peers Enabling Each other's Recovery Support (PEERS) Network, a support group and peer-to-peer mentoring program of survivors which was selected by USAID-SIDA as a case study during the Civil Society Co-creation Workshop held in Istanbul Turkey in November 2014.

His work is internationally recognized. He was a Global Laureate Awardee (Formerly YouthActionNet Award) of the International Youth Foundation in 2005, a fellow of the JICA Youth Invitation Program in 2006 and one of the Asia21 Young Leaders Fellow of Asia Society in 2011. In 2014, he was selected by the US Department of State for the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) for his work in combatting male human trafficking.

Spending time for empowerment of marginalized and vulnerable youth and geographically isolated and disadvantaged communities in Asia and the Pacific, Johnpierre has developed his passion in co-creating knowledge tools towards communities taking an active role in combating poverty, illiteracy, violence, crime and exploitation and promoting peace, conflict transformation and gender justice.

Johnpierre was born in Bacolod City from the Montilla clan of sugar Barons in the Island of Negros south of Philippines. John Piermont Montilla is currently the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the DSWD Field Office 6. As a male survivor of violence, Johnpierre has extensive experience working on human rights specializing on male victims of human rights... (more)