Kung usaping programang pampopulasyon ang pag-uusapan, ilang dekada na ang nakalilipas mula nang huli itong marebyu at napagtuunan ng pansin. Sa ilalim ng iba’t-ibang administrasyon, malinaw ang pagpapahalagang itinutuon ng kung sino mang nasa posisyon sa sandaling makita ang mga programang pampopulasyon na nailatag sa naturang panahon.
Ang grupo ng Mulat Pinoy ay binuo upang iulat ang mga impormasyon ukol sa iba’t ibang isyung ating kinakaharap lalo na sa usaping populasyon at pagbabago. Nais din ng grupo na bigyan ng kapangyarihan sa pamamagitan ng edukasyon at makabuluhang talakayan ang mga Pinoy sa tulong na rin ng Internet. Naglalayon itong malaman at ipaalam ang sasabihin ng mga kandidato sa bawat isyung kinakaharap ng bansa, lalong higit sa usaping Population and Development (PopDev). Kabilang dito ang mga Kapihan Sessions kung saan ang mga eksperto sa usaping PopDev, maging mga personalidad sa larangan ng media, ay inaanyayahan upang ibahagi ang mga kaalaman, karanasan, at repleksyon sa pagkakabit ng usaping ito sa iba’t ibang perspektibo. Sa darating na Oktubre 9, 2010, isang sesyon ang itinalaga sa upang sagutin ang mga katanungan sa nakaambang paglatag ng Consensus Bill on Population na pangungunahan nila dating senador Vicente Paterno, na siyang pinuno ng Joint Steering Committee ng CBP, kasama si David Balangue ng Makati Business Club (MBC).
Sinasabi na ang populasyon ang siyang tinitingnang pangunahing elemento kung saan nakaugnay ang iba pang mga sistema tulad ng edukasyon, pangangalakal, ekonomiya, kalusugan at iba pang mga sektor.
Sa bansang tulad ng Pilipinas, ang populasyon ay isa sa mga maiinit na isyu, katulad ng mga panguhanahing pangangailangan, pagkain, pabahay, edukasyon na hindi pantay-pantay na natatamasa ng isang karaniwang pinoy. Ang iba pang panlipunang kalagayan tulad ng kahirapan, kagutuman, usaping gender, at pangangalaga ng kalikasan ay nakaangkla sa paglaki ng populasyon sa isang bansa.
Ang Kapihan Session sa pamumuno ng Mulat Pinoy at sa pakikipagtulungan ng Probe Media Foundation, Inc. (PMFI) at ng Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD) ay gaganapin sa ika-9 ng Oktubre, 2010 sa ganap na ika-3:30 hanggang ika-6 ng hapon sa Annabel’s Restaurant, Tomas Morato, Quezon City. Para sa karagdagang impormasyon, bisitahin lamang ang Mulat Pinoy website (www.mulatpinoy.ph) o ang Facebook, Multiply at iba pang social media network accounts nito.
Mulat Pinoy offers media grants for citizen journalists Social media and accessible digital technology have brought about the rise of citizen journalism in the Philippines. In the past year, the local cyber-communities were all abuzz with disaster response, advocacy awareness, and political debate. Mulat Pinoy, a social media initiative on population and development, recognizes the medium's pervasive nature and potential for engaging new audiences by providing bloggers and other netizens with the Mulat Pinoy Media Fellowship: Philippine Population in Focus.
Traditionally offered to print and broadcast journalists, a media fellowship provides individuals with the technical and financial resources needed to develop and create media output -- such as a news feature or documentary -- based on an approved proposal. Mulat Pinoy's media fellowship offers grants for the new forms of reportage available online, such as blog features, podcasts, viral videos, even infographics. Creative treatments are encouraged -- as long as there is an identified audience for the intended work, new media formats have an equal chance of receiving grants as its more traditional counterparts. A maximum of P25,000 will be awarded to each selected Fellow.
Entries must present a balanced view of population and development issues. Since population growth (or decline) can be felt over a variety of areas -- from healthcare, to education, or gender issues -- and can have a lasting impact over generations, the field is open to a wide range of topics. To help identify innovative story angles and streamline their fellowship proposals, interested applicants are encouraged to a media forum, Philippine Population in Focus: Myths and Challenges on August 28, 2010, 4:00 to 7:00 PM, at Annabel's Restaurant, Tomas Morato, Quezon City.
To download registration forms for both the Forum and Fellowship, kindly visit www.muatpinoy.ph or www.probefound.com. The deadline for forum registration is on August 20, while grant proposals will be accepted until September 6.
The connections between population and development are among the many perspectives used when various sectors try to dissect the poverty rate and related issues in the country. The recent polls and platforms of electoral candidates paid significant attention to this central issue, as they become the essential criteria in lobbying for support.
Population is a basic element of any given system. The development of public health, the economy, education and many others is reliant on the complex interplay between population and development.
In the Philippines, as in many developing nations, the population issue is a pressing one, with basic necessities like food, shelter and education often unavailable or in very short supply compared to demand. Societal concerns like poverty, gender issues, environmental management and much more all rely heavily on population.
The Philippine Population in Focus: Myths and Challenges forum will held be on August 28, 2010, from 4:00pm to 7:00pm, at the Annabel’s Restaurant, Tomas Morato, Quezon City. This forum is free. Limited slots are available, so those who wish to attend are required to register. Registration will be open until August 20, and registration forms can be downloaded from mulatpinoy.ph or probefound.com.
Discussions will include a workshop in preparation for the Mulat Pinoy Media Fellowship: Philippine Population in Focus. Applicants have a chance to be awarded grants of up to Php 25,000.00. Participate and be an informed media practitioner! Learn more about population and development, and help us connect the dots. Snacks and workshop materials will be provided, and participants can submit their grant proposals onsite. Proposals will also be accepted after the forum, until September 6, 2010. A tentative program is attached.
Mulat Pinoy is composed of individuals whose common goal is to harness the power of social media and the Internet to bring about a broader awareness of population and development (PopDev) issues. The project encourages various sectors to adopt and address PopDev issues in their advocacies, while simultaneously empowering the general public by informing them about what can be done through social media. This is a project of the Probe Media Foundation, Inc. (PMFI) and supported by the Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD).
Why is the business sector becoming involved in a population bill? Don’t they want more people to have more customers for their business? “Yes, we would like to have more customers, but we would like to have paying customers. It is not so much the number of people. It is the quality of people that we need to have,” said Mr. Vicente Paterno, a businessman and former legislator who now chairs the Joint Steering Committee (JSC) on a Consensus Bill on Population (CBP) during the Cebu consultation on the proposed bill on July 2, 2010. The JSC was created to guide the group efforts for a CBP.
A CBP aims to raise the family’s human capital, enable them to seek more remunerative employment, and break the poverty trap. “The business groups want to increase the human capital of this country because we are in competition with the rest of the world. If we have 40% of our population not able to join in this competition for skills or brains or abilities, we lose out,” Mr. Paterno explained.
Based on the National Demographic and Health Survey of 2008, poorest families actually have more children than they can properly nourish and educate. For the business community, particularly those in the JSC such as the businesspeople in the Bishops-Businessmen Conference (BBC), the Makati Business Club (MBC), the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), and the Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD), helping the poor provide quality life to their children is a matter of social justice. Bearing more children than parents can send to school impairs their ability to help the family escape the poverty trap. “If we do not do something about it, we will have deeper intergenerational poverty – the poor having poorer children and grandchildren,” said Mr. Paterno.
The bill seeks a better quality of life for all Filipinos through a poverty reduction strategy of which family planning is a direct element. This can be done through the local government units extending priority assistance to the poor, by reorganizing and strengthening the Commission on Population, and by developing modalities on sexuality and reproductive health education.
In a series of consultations of the JSC with theologians, economists, population and development experts and civil society leaders, it was confirmed that the existing law on Population (RA 6365) passed in August 1971 and amended by PDs 79 and 1204 are no longer operating on correct premises. It was legislated to meet the grave and social economic challenge of high rate of population growth which was over 3%. At that time, the average number of children per mother was 6. In 2007, the population growth rate has gone down to 2.04%. The number of children per mother has also declined to 3.28, but mainly among the wealthier and better educated. It has not taken place so much among the poorer families and those with less education. The proposed bill will be an amendment of this law.
To make the bill a truly consensus one, the JSC also subjected the rudiments of the bill to rounds of consultations in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao with an average of 45 sectoral representatives per forum. The JSC sought the advice of various sectors and opinion leaders on population and development, business and academe. Most of the forums reaffirmed the need for the bill to promote an effective family planning and management programs focused on the poorest couples and parents; strengthening of the Commission on Population; and effective implementation of population program at the local government level. Many of the participants commended the process of evolving a bill on population, its focus on human capital development, and the education of the poor. They appreciated the bringing in of a good mix of participants to the forum, and the proponent’s openness to dialogue. The culminating regional forum was held at the NCR this morning.
The business groups leading the initiative anticipates the bill will be finalized by mid-August and thereafter filed in both Houses this 15th Congress.
February 27| MAKATI CITY – In the fourth part of Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD) and the Probe Foundation’s Mulat Pinoy Kapihan Series, Dr. Zelda Zablan, University of the Philippines Population Institute, Willie Prilles, Planning and Development officer of Naga City and Trustee of the Synergia Foundation, Dr. Leonor Tripon-Rosero, former chairperson of the Professional Regulations Commission and Bangon Pilipinas Vice Presidential candidate Atty. Perfecto “Jun” Yasay joined the discussion on population and education.
Education plays a vital role in economic development, but in the case of some developing countries like the Philippines the idea of education compliments with the term privilege rather than rights. Aside from the problem on children going to school is the issue of deteriorating state of education where according to the Mulat Pinoy research the mean achievement test scores at the primary level is 50 percent, ten points below the passing grade of 60. On the physical aspect of education the growing population of the students can no longer contained by classrooms where its capacity is fifty students maximum and others were forced to study under trees or sheds inside the school premises which also includes shortage on educational facilities like books and visual aids. Problem on education is a major issue that everyone must be aware of it is alarming that despite of the high literacy rate of the country the number of drop outs increases along with the number of graduates vs the number of job opportunities available.
In line with the growing population is the mindset of most parents thinking that their children will help them to ease their current status, unfortunately they didn’t know that the bigger number of children in their family another issue arises aside from providing them proper education is they need to answer the initial needs and that is fulfilling the demand of a hungry stomach. Sometimes the family decides to let the eldest go to school while others wait for the support of the eldest once it finishes his/her studies and finally hired for a job. Here is the statement of Dr. Zelda Zablan connecting population with education.
In terms of quality education Dr. Leonor Tripon-Rosero emphasize that there is no problem in the numbers of teachers in the Philippines, there are lots of teachers in the country and the only problem is the quality of teaching, and there are incidents in some regions there are teachers who are not licensed but they are appointed by the local government to teach in public schools which sacrifices the quality of teaching. She also mentions that she is not against with the idea of brain drain in the country because other countries are doing the same. Here is the statement of the former PRC chairperson on quality education and brain drain in the country.
Alternative education became rampant in the society as support to the traditional education, socio civic groups that works on rural areas to extend help and teach children who could not afford to go to school, at the same time the birth of e-media came in where it helps the students in public schools, most in the countryside to understand their lessons well by means of visuals and other media platforms. Sometimes alternative education became an excuse of ailing state of traditional education.
Based on the report of United Nation Development Program (UNDP) where education is included on the UN Millennium Developmental Goal where it is number 2, the literacy rate of the country stands on 93.9 percent but only 70% of those who enrolled grade 1 reaches grade 5. Universal Primary Education may increase 7% with 20 years but on the way to 2015 as projected by world leaders during the development of Millennium Goals it is only half of what should be achieved.
With the proposal of adding to years in the curriculum of either primary or secondary education, will it answer the issue on quality education? Or we are missing the point here Dr. Zablan states that there is a connection in the mindset of Filipino family under poverty line that they need to prioritize the eldest to go to school with a hope that he or she will be helping his or her siblings in the future, it will take 16 years for the next sibling to wait if he or she can go to school. Dr Leonor assures that there is no shortage on teachers; the only problem is we are lacks good teachers to teach students properly. How about revisiting the budget allocation for education to provide proper classroom along with one book one student policy in all public schools, there are lots of news telling that some books have errors in information I think Department of Education should look on it. With thousands of schools in the country that needs decent classrooms, educational facilities and on time salary for teachers but with a not so big percent from the national budget maybe Dept Ed should rethink a proper allocation of funds to schools along with effective and useful projects that students would benefit.
January 16, 2010 Bo’s Coffee, Glorietta 5, Makati City – In the first installment of the Philippine Center for Population and Development (PCPD) and the Probe Foundation’s Mulat Pinoy Kapihan Series, 2010 Presidential candidates Nicanor Perlas, an environmentalist and independent candidate and Ang Kapatiran standard bearer Councilor JC delos Reyes takes on the issue of population and its impact to the environment. Together with WWF Philippines Jose Ma Lorenzo “Lory” Tan and PCPD Executive Director Felicitas “Fely” Rixhon, they’ve discussed the issue regarding bloating population and how it affects the environment.
In the Mulat Pinoy’s Population and Development primer, it says that the increasing population has a direct impact to the environment, where the environment is the main source of man’s basic needs such as food, water, shelter and clothing. With the rapid increase of population, the demands man increases in order to supply the needs of the community. But replenishing resources takes long and could not afford the needs of men, where in the community its not only men who lives in what we call ecosystem. We human beings co-exist with nature’s flora and fauna which also takes their part on the resources that the nature produces (food, water and shelter). With the impact of global warming, climate change and human being’s neglect over the environment, the delicate balance of nature is jeopardized.
According to Fely, as of 2000 there is 2.36% growth in the population. Presently, the rate has increased to 2.4% and the trend would double within the next 30 years here in the Philippines. The problem with the increase of population is the increasing demand that a growing community needs. And yet, with regard to the environment, it cannot sustain the increasing demand of man and it will take time to replenish. She said that the poor are those who were directly affected with this problem, who lives on one dollar budget per day (45 Pesos). Watch the complete discussion of Director Felicitas “Fely” Rixhon below:
Supporting to Fely’s statement is WWF Philippines CEO Lory Tan who was fresh from the Copenhagen Summit last December. He mentioned that the population has a big impact to the environment. He added that within 60 years the consumption of fish stock in the Philippines would increase to almost 90% according to Bureau of Fishery. He also cited that the increasing trend of deforestation in the country is rapid due to the demands of shelter and other needs. He mentioned that there are two main environmental problems in the country, first is climate change and second is the failure to execute environmental laws and guidelines. The issues and topics on climate change were discussed in the Copenhagen Summit in Denmark last December 16, 2009. Despite the lack of resolution in the said conference, it marked the beginning of people’s awareness with taking care of Mother Nature.
Environmentalist Nick Perlas agreed on what Lory stated. Perlas also mentioned that he has proposed ideas and actions in his platform. Watch his ten minute stand on the topic of population and environment where I wanted that readers of this blog will see his idea first hand.
Opposing to the idea that the country is over populated is Ang Kapatiran standard bearer Councilor JC delos Reyes. He mentioned that the country is not over populated and the issue of poverty is not in relation of population that is increasing but it is rooted from the corruption in the government. Here is the complete ten minute statement of delos Reyes on the topic.
I was confused with the statement that the country is not over populated by just looking on the idle land as delos Reyes answered my question. On the other hand, Perlas only answered me with “undetermined.” Frankly, I’m supporting reproductive health that will first safeguard the rights and health of women from their husbands forcing them to have from the health problems caused by unplanned pregnancy. Others may not agree with me especially who sees that having large number of children might be benefiting in the future or by those who never sees the life of those living on marginalized poverty. I just want to make it simple like in our economics class on high school which I commonly used on this blog entry: the increase on population triggers the increase on demands, but not all producers can supply the need…which then leads to scarcity of resources. It’s like the environment who cannot sustain supplying the increasing needs of the growing populace, since it takes time to replenish the resources. Trees don’t grow overnight together with the bearing of fruits, reaping of rice and wheat. It goes the same with the sources of meat and so are the other natural resources.
Controlling population doesn’t mean deteriorating the race of the Filipinos as contrary to the statement of one of the Kapatiran’s senatorial bet. Controlling the population means conserving the use of resources for future needs. I don’t believe in the idea “na magsaya hanggang meron pa, dahil bukas maaaring wala na” (enjoy while supply last). The reason why we conserve is that we would like our future generations to enjoy what we have now. The message of the first Mulat Pinoy Kapihan Series on Population and Environment is simple: we would like to see and listen to the stand of the presidential candidates on specific issues. I learned a lot from the organizers especially from other guest coming from Conservation, Foundation for Philippine Environment, student body and members of Mulat Pinoy, that population affects environment who serves us resources of our needs and that is plain and simple. With regard of the United Nation Millennium Developmental Goals, the topic on population and environment hits four aspects: poverty, environment, women and children.
The Mulat Pinoy Kapihan series will have another session at Bo’s Coffee, Glorietta 5, Makati City on January 23, 2010 at 2PM, with the topic: government resources and population dynamics. My questions with regard to the next week discussion are:
Is there any government policy that would answer the growing population of the country?
Given that the population increases, how will the government cater to their needs such as education and healthcare?
I am Flow Galindez, blogger and a proud advocate of UN World Food Programme Against Child Hunger and Protection. WFP's Bloggers Against Hunger Philippine Connector and MDG advocate. Also advocates for climate change and HIV/ AIDS awareness, education, child and women's rights. I also blog about entertainment, events, lifestyle, news, tech and gadgets, movies and theaters and foodie stuff--- Opinions expressed here are my own.
