Creating and innovating for service

The UP Alumni Association Cebu Chapter will hold this year’s homecoming at 6 p.m. Dec.  4, 2015  at the AS Conference Hall of UP Cebu campus. The  theme is “Creating and Innovating for Service” and for the third time, the Tatak UP Awards will be presented to alumni from different UP campuses in the country who have contributed to community development of Cebu in various fields like Education, Science and Technology, Medicine and Public Health, Law, Public Service and Governance, Social Change, Advocacy and People Empowerment, Business and Entrepreneurship, Arts, Design and Culture, Communication and Media Arts, Athletics and Sports, and others.

The Board of Directors of the UP Alumni Association Cebu Chapter initiated Tatak UP Award in 2011 to recognize accomplishments of UP alumni based in Cebu who come from  different campuses in the country and were not awarded by any other alumni organization. The three major criteria are service orientation, leadership and training. This means that those who have been recognized by UP Alumni organizations whether system-wide or by a chapter will not be nominated.  A search committee  solicited  nominations and handled the screening.

The awarding is done every two years. The first  was held on Dec. 1, 2011 where 51 awardees were honored at the UP Cebu Conference Hall. The second was on Jan. 29, 2014 (moved due to the two calamities that hit the Visayas in 2013) where 21 awardees were honored at the Capitol Social Hall. For the third one on  Dec. 4, 2015, 20 nominees will be awarded at the AS Conference Hall of UP Cebu. This year’s theme “Creating and Innovating for Service” is very relevant to the needs and the call of the time. It also guides  the search and screening of nominees.   UP alumni based in Cebu are  invited to attend the homecoming to interact and exchange experiences and prospects for a better community. For inquiries, you may contact the undersigned through 0917-3295201.

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The Civics and Culture department of St. Benedict Childhood Education Centre invited me last week to give a lecture to their Grades five, six and seven pupils on “Revisiting the Ancient Filipino Culture and Exploring its Impact on Modern Life.” I gladly welcomed the invitation because it shows how St. Benedict is taking its Civics and Culture subjects seriously. It is so encouraging to talk to the very young about cultural heritage considering my experience of talking to an older audience, Since sources on pre-colonial Philippines are rare, I was relieved to find from my collection six sources  which teachers of Civics and Culture can use. Four were written by William Henry Scott: “Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Society and Culture,” “Cracks in the Parchment Curtain,” “Pre-Hispanic Source Materials,” and “Looking for the Pre-Hispanic Filipino.” The fifth is the first chapter entitled  “Pre-colonial Cebu” in “Cebu Under the Spanish Flag (1521-1896): An Economic and Social History by Bruce Fenner. The sixth is “Filipino Martial Culture” by Mark V. Wiley. In Scott’s “Barangay,” the first part is on the Visayas while the second part is on Mindanao and Luzon.

Storytelling  is very effective instead of a straight lecture. Now and then use native terms which students are familiar with. The most important thing is to instill in  young minds is their Asian cultural roots and the significance of our geographic location and of water as a heritage – we are an archipelago. “It is the waters that connect us, it is the islands that separate us.” During the rest of the year, the storytelling can be reinforced with several visuals and trips to the many museums in the city.

At the end of the talk, the coordinator informed me that the Civics and Culture curriculum is well distributed from grade 4 to grade 6 – Local Culture and History, Regional, Asian, Philippine.

Government is assigned in another level. This is a good development instead of ramping the same subject on students every year till high school. No wonder Social Studies and eventually History is not popular. The coordinator cited the lack of resource materials on Cebu. There is a whole array of sources of Cebu alone: “Folk Culture of the Central Visayas” by the Philippine Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports; “Cebu in Legend and in History” by Evangeline Lavilles de Paula; “A Short History of Cebu 1500-1890’s and the Anti-Spanish Revolution in Cebu” by Dionisio A.

Sy; three books by Resil B. Mojares – “Theater in Society, Society in Theater: Social History of a Cebuano Village, 1840-1940,” “Casa Gorordo in Cebu” and “Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu;

The War Against the Americans”; “Life in Old Parian” by Concepcion G. Briones; “A Dictionary of Cebuano Arts” by Erlinda K. Alburo; and “The Battle for Cebu” by  Andrew S. Rowan and the “Siege of Sudlon (1890-1900)” by Michael Cullinane. These and  tours to historical sites are more than enough to enliven  Civics and Culture classes.