(my apologies for the belated start to the blog -- the internet has been a bit fuzzy these past few days)
Hello all, and welcome to the Project Philippines 2010 blog! For those of you who don’t know, Project Philippines 2010 is run by members of SEALNet, the Southeast Asian Service Leadership Network, which promotes service leadership and youth empowerment across Southeast Asia through international service projects.
I can’t believe Day 1 of the project has finally come. As a SEALNet co-president, I’ve been checking in with the project leaders ever since they decided to step up, so seeing this project unfold before my eyes is really fulfilling.
We began the day with a quick breakfast and headed over to the office of one of our local partners, Feed the Children-Philippines (FTCP). FTCP is an NGO that focuses on meeting the fundamental needs of children as laid out in the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child program – food, shelter, etc. Our team got to meet the gracious staff and our contact, Ms. Esperanza, who really did a lot to inspire the team through her excitement for SEALNet’s efforts and her openness to a long-term partnership.
After departing from the FTCP office, we headed over to UC-Banilad, where we worked on coming up with ‘ground agreements,’ which are a set of agreements that everyone comes up with together to define the manner in which all the team members interact with each other.
Then…Jollibee!!
Jollibee is like McDonalds, except uber-awesome sauce. So yeah, that was lunch :)
After lunch, we headed over to meet the students of Cebu National Science High School, one of the two groups of high students we’ll be working with this year. As a team, we were a little anxious about the students being shy around us, but that fear was quickly dispelled as we got to interact with the students. Although this is the first year Project Philippines gets to work with Cebu National, you’d hardly be able to tell – the students were compassionate, charismatic and gifted with impeccable comic timing. We did a workshop with them where they worked together to visually present their interpretation of service leadership; I think all the team members were pretty blown away by how insightful (and funny!) the students were in their presentations.
While the rest of the team wrapped up the workshop, some of us accompanied the project leaders to UP-Cebu, our other partner high school, to negotiate the project schedule, as the principal had concerns about the number of school days missed by the students. The principal was very accommodating with us, and we settled on a revised schedule pretty quickly.
In the evening we had dinner at Golden Courie in the SM Mall, where I also managed to snag a guitar in a nearby store for some impromptu singalongs. When we got back to the hotel, it was time to debrief about the day’s happenings and set the project objectives as a team, which will be finalized today (Day 2).
Day 1 really inspired me and filled me with hope – hope for the project, hope for the future of SEALNet, hope for Southeast Asia in general. Everyone involved with this project have their hearts in the right place, and I truly believe this project has a great chance of doing something really special in the long-term for the communities of Cebu City.
Well that’s all for me. Till tomorrow…
-APlan
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