A festival offered to Mother Earth
By: Sunshine Fuentes (SOS Volunteer)

CONTINUE>>..... cultural groups.  During the first day of the event after the arrival of all the delegates, there were sets of activities made like group dynamics and games, group discussions and reflections regarding most pressing issues in the society like global warming, destructive fishing and destructive farming and also a formulation of the specific plans and statement concerning environment which will be presented to the leaders of the various institutions on the following day. And the highlight of the event is the dance-drama presentation of the cultural groups. The presentation basically contains the manifestation of the detrimental effects of using destructive methods of fishing and farming and along with it is  their passionate call to  the parents, government officials and other leaders of the institutions to do something to help solve the environmental problems at the same time protect their rights as children.

On the second day was the closing program and the highlight is the presentation of the specific plans and statements together with the response coming from duty bearers.  Aside from the children and youth participants, there were also important guests who actually tried their best to attend the said festival despite of the distance of the host barangay from the nearest municipality. Among these people were Ms. Estela Obut, Mayor of the municipality of Tudela, Bobby Alaman, Assistant Supervisor of the Protected area office and Detachment Commander of Mitugas, Master Sergeant Alimbang. However, there were also few prominent people of this province who weren’t able to come for some other reasons but explicitly shown their full support to the event by extending their help to make the event successful. These people were Honorable Loreto Leo S. Ocampos who donated t-shirts for the participants, and Ozamiz City Councilor Atty. Connie Lim who donated food for the participants.

The 2009 earth day celebration is very unique as compared to previous year’s celebration because it was the first time that the said event was hosted by a far flank barangay or was held away from the city proper. According to the Gitib Inc. executive director Roldan Gonzales, they chose that particular area because it best suits to the theme “pagpanguma” (farming). He added that “it’s nice that we get closer to the community of farmers and it will also help the participants to have deeper meditation on how to take good care of the life in this planet”.         

In totality the whole event went well and very successful. Despite of some technical troubles and perverse weather, the show went on due to the joint efforts of barangay council headed by captain Jovencito Galleto , four cultural groups, donors and most especially Gitib Inc.. At the end of the day, the participants didn’t just enjoy the camaraderie of each other but at the same time they did something rewarding and something that can somehow help change the world in one way or the other.

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