Blog Action Day: Climate Change

Our backyard during Typhoon Ondoy. My whole basement was under water.

Last night while pondering on when I should move back to my basement one thing that crossed my mind was:

"Will there be another Ondoy in my lifetime?"

A few months ago I chanced upon an article that mentioned that the sea level will rise by at least 1.3 meters (as predicted by scientists) in the next century. I realized that it was probably the reason why the shoreline of our hideaway beach place in Bicol was eating up the land area. When I was a kid we could walk around the coral reef during low tide. In the past few years I noticed that you have to wade around in waist high water just to get on the reef (plus the reef shrank!). And whenever it rains a small creek forms at the side of our place. My Aunt said that there's been flooding in the past few years. Climate change or due to deforestation, I don't know.

I dread experiencing another Ondoy. It's not about losing things. It's about facing your mortality and questioning if you'll be safe ever again. And I've been losing sleep over that since that dreadful day Ondoy swept in floodwater in my room where I found myself in waist high to chest-deep water in less than 5 minutes. I'm glad I got out without getting grounded and I just managed to grab my hand bag. And I didn't have it that bad, my 87-year old uncle stayed on his roof at Provident Village for about 24 hours before getting rescued.

I read too that there is no stopping the ice caps from melting. This is caused by climate change. It's time for each of us to take action to slow-down the ice caps from melting. I don't even want to think about whether it is possible for our whole country to go under water.

I read that the only way to slow down climate change governments have to take big active steps. Hello President Obama, I hope the US can make the biggest initiative on this, my government is kinda very busy right now with the calamity. Please?

I say let's each lessen our carbon footprint, at least we can help in our own little way.

This post was written in support of Blog Action Day.

Blog Action Day: Poverty, Time for Action Guys!

I'm launching this ONLINE MENTORING PROGRAM in time for Blog Action Day.

Poverty is present in many different ways and usually people relate poverty to its material manifestation (or lack thereof). I've been thinking for a long while now how to address the issue of "poverty in our education sector", NOT the physical stuff, but more on the learning side, specifically on internet literacy. I believe that lack of internet literacy is a form of poverty too and I can say that it's been an advocacy of mine to fight that. 

In the past 2 years I've had the privilege of seeing a lot of things and there was one question that nagged me for the longest time - how can I raise the internet literacy of our public school educators? 

I've been working with GILAS and CICT for sometime now and I've trained a good number of public school educators in the past 2 years and one of the things we discovered is that there were schools that have been connected to the internet but have only been using it for 2 hours a week.  2 HOURS PER WEEK is just the amount of time I spend on email in a day. 

HUWWWWWHAAATTTTT?!!!?!?!?

Oh yeah, it's surprising but that's reality. I dug around for some answers and realized that what the educators who have gone through training need continuing education. They need someone who they could buzz and ask questions so they could continue learning. I realized this when I saw that a lot of educators who buzz me ask questions on how to do stuff (which I usually answer back with a URL they could read) eventually moved on to become internet champions on their own.

This happened because their lifestyle changed. I realized that if you want someone to become an internet champion, you have to make them addicted to it. They have to fall in love with using it. And that will never happen during a seminar nor a short-classroom discussion. Someone has to pull them in. Remember the time that your friend bugged you to start blogging? Or when Youtube first graced your monitor? Or when ten years ago you were looking for a better search engine and your friend told you to use Google? 

Yup, that's something YOU can do.

After many months of discussions and program definition (which I did not want to be complicated) with my friends from GILAS and the CICT we're finally ready to share and ASK HELP for a really out-of-the-box project that we want to get off the ground -

THE ONLINE MENTORING PROGRAM

by Volunteers for Educators, 

to uplift the internet literacy of our country's public school educators

This online mentoring program was designed to be hip, quick and light - on both sides. We're just asking for a few minutes of your regular chat-time or email-time or Plurk/Twitter-time to spend time with a new chatmate err an educator. 

For more information about the program, go here.

Be a volunteer! Register today!

Why I Think I'm Green

Green, not De La Salle green archer (but I'm one), nor the funny green kind, but green, the environment-friendly kind. I'm writing this post for the Blog Action Day organization which has chosen the raise awareness about the environment and I think you still have time to make a post if you have a blog (since we are GMT+8:00 here in Manila).

Anyway, I don't think I help much with regard to protecting the environment (if I had time I'd love to help out in a cause or something), but I do help in my own little way by doing the following:

1. I segregate trash. I'm our household's official dishwasher whenever we don't have a helper and I make sure I segregate wet and dry trash. Leftovers are always fed to Patch (our retarded dog) and my Mom has made it a rule to always store plastic bags properly so they could be recycled.

2. No rice left-over on the plate. I've witnessed how farmers go about producing the rice that's served on our tables and seeing how IRRI's protecting this valuable crop reinforced what my parents taught us when we were kids, "Huwag magtira ng kahit isang butil ng kanin sa plato."

3. Use native products. I prefer using baskets and Filipino made craft-products rather than plastic boxes to store my stuff. I also love using native bags made of indigenous materials rather than imported leather bags (I have some but they are mostly gifts).

4. Recycle! I admit, I'm a pack-rat and I don't throw away stuff easily, and that includes ribbons and gift wrappers which I could re-use. I remember recycling old stockings and retaso for some Christmas frames I did a while back. I got that trait from my Mom and you should see her make new stuff out of materials that are supposed to be trash.

5. Preserve things that can be used by the next generation. I always took care of my things. I have toys and stuff that I had since I was a kid and I have passed it on to Miguel (i.e. my Lego). I've also inherited some stuff from my Lola when she passed away.

I think the greatest contribution our family has done for the environment is fight for the preservation of the beach front in our province (Camangui, Pasacao, Camarines Sur). Our neighbor built an illegal port beside our place and it's been really disappointing to see how the beach is becoming polluted from the stuff coming out of the ships that dock in their port. It's an illegal port! Sniff.

Anyway, what about you? What little things do you do to protect the environment?