Tags: Public Holidays and Celebration
By Anna Valmero
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA – From Vice President Jejomar Binay to environmentalists, athletes and artists, all of them have high hopes that better things will come for Filipinos in 2011.
They also vow to champion various causes and advocacies apart from their personal New Year’s resolutions.
Vice President Binay urged the public to work towards nation building and for politicians to set aside political partisanship.
“We look to the New Year with optimism. Yet this optimism is tempered by the reality that there are no quick fixes, and that much needs to be undone and refocused in the way government serves the people,” he said.
For his part as presidential adviser for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) concerns and public housing czar, Binay said he will focus on affordable socialized housing for the 3.7 million informal settlers nationwide and intensify efforts to curb illegal recruitment.
This year, Binay promises to hold dialogues and consultations with OFW communities abroad “to hear directly from OFWs their concerns and to assure them that the government puts priority on their welfare.”
He also vows to visit government relocation sites would allow him to “find out their needs and to make sure that facilities and services are regularly maintained.”
Political analyst Mon Casiple is hoping President Benigno Aquino III will make good on his promises this year, in particular getting rid of corrupt public officials and delivering social services to poor Filipinos such as health insurance.
“Building the foundation for government reform and democracy is the greatest legacy he can do during his presidency and that is by fulfilling his promises,” Casiple noted.
Gregg Yan, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines communications officer, said his group will champion three issues: climate change solutions, sustainable seafood supply, and sustainable development and overpopulation.
Aside from supporting the adoption and development of renewable energy sources and non-polluting electric vehicles, Yan said the group will introduce a long-term educational campaign on how Filipinos can reduce their daily carbon footprint via Earth Hour 2011.
“Climate solutions will focus on what every Filipino can do after the symbolic 60-minute lights switch-off every March. Simple lifestyle changes on how we use resources like electricity have a huge impact on our carbon footprint,” said Yan.
For example, using available green technologies like LED bulbs over power-hungry incandescent lights and unplugging unused appliances, will help reduce electric use.
WWF Philippines is also promoting consumption of tilapia, bangus and Pangasius that are grown through sustainable fish farming methods.
Sustainable development is key to address the overpopulation in the country, which puts a toll on the use of resources and accumulated carbon emissions that account for global warming and climate change.
The country’s population ballooned to over 94.1 million in 2010, according to the National Statistics Office.
“Overpopulation is the elephant in the room, for no matter how much we reduce our individual carbon footprints, the aggregated footprint of over 90 million Filipinos will easily equate the footprints of more developed countries. Thus, birth control, through natural or artificial means, to control the population growth is necessary,” said Yan.
Tonyo Cruz is hoping bloggers like him would be more responsible in using social media as an avenue “to monitor and engage the government and promote better Internet usage.”
He cited the “Juanvote” coverage of the May 2010 presidential elections as having paved that way on how bloggers can use their resources and knowledge to give updates on national elections at the local level.
With more Filipinos owning mobile phones and more access to the Internet, he said Filipinos can “democratize (Internet) content and use it to as checks-and-balance for those in public office.”
Benedict Camara, president of the Philippine Dodgeball Association (PDBA) and Asian Dodgeball Federation, is optimistic of promoting dodgeball as a college sport and ultimately an Olympic sport for the country this year.
“We hope for the acceptance of dodgeball into the Philippine Olympic Committee and for the university and community leagues to elevate it into more competitive level,” said Camara, who added they have already submitted requirements to the Philippine Olympic Committee this December.
“It does not require height such as basketball so Filipinos have an edge to be more skilled in the sport,” he added.
To promote the sport, Camara said there will be dodgeball clinics and a beach dodgeball tournament during the summer. (Schedules of which would be posted on the PDBA website.)
Meanwhile, Filipino illustrator Raphael Ramento is hoping 2011 would be a good year for artists like him. He expects that after the recession, there will be more business for the local graphics industry, particularly outsourced work from abroad.
“In terms of skill in graphic design, I’d say we are at par with other countries and there will be more work for the coming year,” said Ramento.
The biggest challenge for the Philippines to break into the international comic book industry hence, the need to develop the local talent pool “to create another ‘Jonah Hex’ by Tony de Zuniga and Zsazsa Zaturnnah by Carlo Vergara, to name a few.
Most of the serialized “Funny Komiks” produced during the late 1980s to 1990s lack originality in terms of plot and characters, which local talents must develop to become successful in the industry. The lack of capital and huge taxes on local comic book producers made it more difficult for the local comics industry to flourish as well.
For artist and environmentalist AG Saño, the year is a beginning of another battle to stop the exploitation of marine mammals such as dolphins and sea lions in amusement parks.
He has been actively calling out people online to boycott the ongoing dolphin show at Cubao in Quezon City as a means to stop the illegal trade and poaching of dolphins, apart from painting dolphins on walls nationwide.
Saño said that populations of dolphins worldwide have decreased significantly due to the annual brutal harvest of some 23,000 dolphins at one of the coves in Taiji’s National Park in Japan.
As shown in the 2009 documentary “The Cove,” dolphins are often smuggled to be part of dolphin shows worldwide while the rest, which are sold for meat, are slaughtered by piercing the dolphin heads of bayonets, leaving behind a bloody cove after the slaughter.
“Dolphins love freedom. With all sincerity, I feel bad for the organizers if they lost revenue; but I feel worse for the dolphins and sea lions who lost freedom. This job (in dolphinariums and amusement parks) has no retirement, they will perform until they die,” said Saño, noting that as “echo locators”, dolphins have sensitive hearing that the sound of the water in a small pool when they swim and the claps of audiences are deafening to them.
Rem De Leon, a former associate professor at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, is hoping to purse “creative social entrepreneurship”, a term earlier popularized by the British Council referring to the creation of an enterprise via creative projects such as writing.
The year ahead is also a continuation of his writings about the “exploration of the Filipino identity and self, which are important for community mobilization.”
“I want to focus on creative stories that will bring the heritage-identity aspect to promote a reading culture among Pinoys and make them proud of our own culture, and eventually inspire action from that awareness and integrity on our roots,” he said.
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Thank you very much for supporting us in our bid to become a member of the Philippine Olympic Committee. Dodgeball is truly a sport for all Filipinos, and many can benefit from it if they give it a chance.
Thanks again, and Happy New Year! ^^x
Rapunzel Garcia, Philippine DodgeBall Association
It sound really positive and I love the part about the dolphins but promoting and supporting fish farms is a very bad idea. Find out what all those fish in those fish-farms eat and how they catch all that fish-food and how they destroy corals and other species to feed those fish. Putting all those fish together is so un-natural and will create an unhygienic situation where it is most favorable for diseases to form just like with bird-flu, swine flu and mad-cow disease. The best way to reduce the carbon foot print is to promote and sponsor veganism.
Going vegan will hurt nobody but will heal everybody including our planet.
Plant based diets will be the future make plants your business but stay far away from GMO’s and Monsanto, they simply want to own all the seeds and the rest of the world. Stay pure and honest by eating pure and honest food.