Once envisioned to be the Garden City of the Philippines, Quezon City is still highly considered today as one of the few urban centers in the country with the largest ecological parks. These parks, which serve as green spaces where people enjoy communion with nature, provide pleasant and peaceful ambience in the midst of the otherwise busy, congested, and polluted metropolis.
With about 300 eco parks including one in the 2,700-hectare La Mesa Watershed, Quezon City has been selected to be the venue of the first ever Young Eco Ambassadors: Catalyst (YEA), a youth-led national environmental camp for high school students, which will be held on June 1 to 3, 2016 at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
Ten successful school applicants or a total of 30 high school students and 10 advisers from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao will fly in to Quezon City to join the three-day fun and knowledge-filled event, which is aimed at building the capacity of high school clubs to address environmental concerns in their respective schools and communities.
“We are very excited to meet our participants and go through a whole new learning adventure with them,” said Archie Jerome Maramag, the Project Leader of YEA, which is one of the winning project ideas in the Seeds for the Future Grant Competition by the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) of the United States Department of State.
The participants will undergo several sessions which will equip them with useful information on Philippine biodiversity and Climate Change concepts, as well as practical knowledge on community environmentalism and project management, among others. YEA speakers include renowned advocates for the environment such as Biodiversity Management Bureau’s Director Mundita Lim, Save Philippine Seas Chief Mermaid Anna Oposa, and Bike Advocate Quin Cruz. YEA will shoulder the participants’ round-trip transfers, food, accommodation and all materials during the camp.
To increase student appreciation of ecological concepts in an urban setting, YEA will treat the participants in a tree walk around UP Diliman Campus, which is a lush green region that is not only considered as the university town’s environmental legacy but is also a sanctuary of diverse flora and fauna. In fact, UP Diliman is home to a 16-hectare man-made forest called the UP Arboretum, which contains some endemic species of trees, mammals, birds and reptiles.
With the assistance of the Biodiversity Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Young Eco Ambassadors-to be will also pay a visit to the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife, another zoological and botanical garden at the heart of Quezon City. The 80-hectare estate houses a wildlife rescue center which takes care of certain animal species that have been subjected to abandonment or confiscation.
“We want our young participants to realize that sustainable living, even in a sprawling concrete jungle, can still be achieved, and that progress and conservation of the environment can go together,” said YEA organizer and UP Green League President Ram Murro.
Not willing to send the students back to their schools without moving them to action, YEA will also assist the participants in coming up with their own project plans or campaigns to tackle environmental issues in their communities. There will be a workshop on project planning where the students will be expected to present solutions to various environment-related problems.
Overall, the goal is to promote an eco-friendly culture in every high school and raise the country’s next generation of environmental leaders, Murro explained.
Meanwhile, Maramag noted that YEA is also one of the opening activities of the DENR-led observation of the Philippine Environment Month in June.
Other event collaborators include the #ZeroSachetPH Initiative, Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and the National Youth Commission, he said. ADVT.