Consensus Bill on Population: Isang sesyon mula at para sa Pinoy!

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.

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Join the Philippine Population in Focus: Myths and Challenges on August 28

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.

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Join the Philippine Population in Focus: Myths and Challenges forum

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).

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Business groups back Consensus Bill on Population (CBP)

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.

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