Friday, July 30, 2010

Three-day Cyber Expo, a success; to link world cyber events




The conduct of the three-day Davao Cyber Expo turned out successful with five events held simultaneously in one exposition held from July 23 to 25 at the Event Center of SM City Davao.

Kitsi Avila, of E-Squared Events and organizer of the exposition, said it was not just a mere show of gadgets and push their advocacy to make Davao City as the leading Cyber City in the Philippines but keep the youth be responsible while in the cyber space.

Avila said they are strongly advocating on anti-pornography and piracy saying that these two concerns need to be controlled and avoided.

"Our campaign is continuing and we make sure that our members follow and observe our policy and position," he said.

Avila said the Cyber Expo featured five events namely, the Cyber Games where a sports Olympics was held on DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) with top eight teams competing during the expo after they went through a pre-elimination among 45 competing teams.

The players were mostly college students and out-of-school youths; the E Games where this group also held their own tournament. The exhibitors where from Manila; the LPX or LAN Party Extreme where 80 members displayed their customize PCs costing over P100,000.

In this PC show the units were given awards as to performance levels and speed in terms of high-end games; and the Costume Players who were inspired by Anime; and Forum on Responsible Gaming.

He also said part of the expo was the Tech Extreme Exhibits where 15 companies joined.

Meanwhile, Avila said Cyber Games like DOTA is not just about playing the game. It's about sports where players develop quick decisions, reflexes and competitiveness.

"One could be able to develop the mind and reflexes and those over 22 years old are too old for the game," he said.

On the other hand, Avila said DOTA is a customer scenario for the real-time strategy video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft.

He said the objective of the scenario is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancients, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map.

Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters called "creeps".

As in role-playing games, players level up their hero and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

He said playing DOTA will also develop their relation as a team.

The Davao Cyber Expo was able to also change the perception of adults and their hosting an exposition gave them mileage where people would understand and know better the cyber space.

He said their next move is to link with World Cyber Events and they will continue to hold more events on cyber games. (PNA) LOR DDB/lvp

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Davao City hosts to foreign retirees

The Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) regional office here registered retirees from other countries that considered Davao City not only as a second home but also as investment area.

PRA-Davao chief Jaime Llanes said they also received inquiries from prospective foreign retirees wanting to locate here not only for residential purposes but for business prospects as well.

Right now there are about 300 registered retirees at PRA-Davao, mostly from South Korea, Europe and the United States.

Llanes said they remain optimistic of the prospects of the industry and together with the other sectors here particularly on tourism Davao is aggressively being pushed also in the international market of its nature sites very ideal for island-to-highland destinations.

He also said foreign retirees here contribute to the economy.

Data reported by PRA indicated that the Philippines has 20,000 foreign retirees enrolled at PRA and the government retirement authority is campaigning for more because their stay here could spur economic activities.

PRA chief Retired Gen. Edgar B. Aglipay earlier said that every foreign retiree coming to the country could create at least four jobs.

He cited for instance that if Davao would have 1,000 retirees, each of them would spend $ 1,000 monthly and that would translate to $ 1 million injected in the economy of the city within a month.

Davao has advantage over other areas in the country because of its weather and the abundance of agricultural products like fruits and vegetables as well as the availability of unspoiled resorts like beaches and the presence of good sports facilities like golf courses.

It may be recalled that Davao City was named Most Competitive City compared to the other cities in the Philippines. It ranked No. 1 in the survey of the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center in 2008 in terms of the cost of doing business, infrastructure, dynamism of local economy, quality of life, human resource and training conducted by local government unit.

In the overall ranking of 10 Metro Cities in the Philippines, Davao City placed first followed by Quezon City, then Makati City, Manila City, Marikina City, 6th Lapu-lapu City, Paranaque City, Muntinlupa City, Cebu City and 10th, Pasay City. (PNA) LAP/PDB/lvp

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Mayor Sara leads storytelling for Davao kids at SM City

posted @ http://www.pia.gov.ph/

by Prix D. Banzon

Davao City (23 July) -- City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio led the storytelling for Davao school children at SM City Davao Entertainment Center in time for the National Children's Book Day celebrated nationwide on July 20, 2010.

The mayor who came with her daughter Sharky took time out of her busy schedule of reading a story to children coming from 8 public elementary schools of mixed grades level from 1 to 6.

The story entitled "Emang Engkantada at ang Tatlong Haragan" is about how kids could also help protect the environment. The storytelling was accompanied by live performance adopted from the story portrayed by selected school children depicting a healthy environment and later destroyed by people.

In her brief message, Mayor Sara said she is pursuing her advocacy on school children learning not only to read but of reading and comprehension. The stories we read to our children are good source of information where they could pick some lessons.

"It is important that at a young age kids already know how to read with comprehension because I would like to share to them my experience that at age 3, I already know how to read and I want them to be taught early," she said.

She said part of her advocacy is for the teachers in the preschool under the supervision of the city government where to undergo seminar on how to teach reading to the kids.

In partnership with some private schools here our preschool teachers underwent seminar on this and I would expect them to teach what they learned to their respective students.

She said considering that the Davao City School Board is under her supervision they make sure that education for the kids will be given focus and this will be part of her priorities.

SM Davao mall manager Lynette Lopez said the storytelling is part of SM Cares project which was done simultaneously in 34 malls nationwide. The event was held in coordination with the National Book Development Board, Vibal Publishing, Inc., Department of Education and the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

She said corporate-wide SMs tenants numbered to 12,000 with 25,000 employees plus 3 million shoppers nationwide, they will continue to embark on projects inline with their corporate social responsibility and this includes among others activities that would encourage children to read.

"Every third Tuesday of July they will hold regular storytelling for the Davao kids. "This is our way of encouraging kids to love reading and welcome them to the wonderful world of books," she said.

Meanwhile teachers from the Magallanes Elementary School also joined the event to support their students who rendered a number on smart reading. They were trained following a specialized reading program.

Teacher Alona Tomboy who handles storytelling and Readers Theater said their school has organized the Communication Arts where this program is offered by the school during summer. It is a workshop open to students for both private and public schools of Davao City. "And we had a good number of enrollees last summer," she said.

In their school alone, she said are 400 pupils trained under ComArts mostly belonging to the honors class. These pupils are taught the right pronunciation, intonation, accent, phonetics and others.

She said it really needs discipline and focus and these kids learn fast as they too are excited to join in competition. And because of their ability, talent and performance they won in contests either on team reading, theater reading and readers reading.

"Exposing children this early is of their advantage and it gives them better opportunity especially that they had developed their self-confidence," she said.

She also said that the school reinforced the reading habit of their pupils by allocating more time on reading. Every Wednesdays pupils for both the morning and afternoon sections are given 30 minutes more for reading session. The Magallanes Elementary School has 6,000 pupils enrolled this school year.

The other teachers that hold specialized reading are Rosalina Caballero for Team Reading, Ma. Teresa Nacion for Readers Theater and Francis Tarsog for Smart Talking/Team Reading. (PIA) [top]

Mothers turned entrepreneurs thru veggie farming

(Feature)
Mothers turned entrepreneurs thru veggie farming

PANABO CITY, Davao del Norte, July 19 (PNA) -- It started with a backyard vegetable garden but with the aid of Davao City-based non-government-organization, they became regular suppliers of vegetables in the market.

These mothers of Sitio Tagurot, Barangay Nicolas, this city decided to bond together when Baba's Foundation, Inc. (BFI) reached out to them so they could improve their farming, provided they have to organize themselves, undergo seminars on basic business operations and maintain sound financial procedures.

BFI executive director Cristera Racosalem-Epal said that although they avail of loans at minimal amount, what is important is for them to know the basics in terms of lending and repayment.

She said they need to build their credit standing as well as build trust among themselves for continuity of the project.

One mother, Anita A. Monsanto, said kinahanglan gyud ang disiplina dili lang sa pamaagi sa pagtanom ug gulay apan sa imong loan para ma mintinar ang maayong relasyon namo sa BFI nga maoy nagtabang sa amo ug sa among pagbayad sa loan. (Discipline is the key not only in vegetable planting but also with our relation to BFI that help us and with our loan repayment).

"We found these mothers going to the right direction insofar as their vegetable farming operation is concerned because of their good credit standing," she said.

She said marginalized as they are, they were able to follow the techniques that brought mark improvement in their living.

Monsanto said there was a big difference between their lives in the 90s compared now when they followed the correct farming techniques and some basic business operations.

She said that before, aside from the lack of capital to support their operation, they had difficulty in the marketing as they had to pass through layers of middle men and not getting a good price of their products.

She also said there was an improvement in their income and they were able to send their children to school and build a house and acquire some appliances and other farm implements.

With each mother occupying about a hectare lot, they maximized their production by covering all areas of planting vegetables and with the loan they sourced out from BFI, they can now employ workers of at least two during planting and harvesting. The maintenance of the farm is left to the members of the family.

These mothers also formed the Tagurot Center 1 as their bagsakan center, where they deliver their proceeds and the BFI consolidates their produce for delivery to the market.

Both the BFI and the group check the prevailing price in the market.

Emily S. Comaling, BFI technical support staff, said there was check and balance as to the prices in the market.

She said there was a minimal mark up and this would go to the group's association.

Epal said these mothers were just among their beneficiaries of Sustainable Marketing with Information Link Enterprise (SMILE) Project, a project extended to poor communities.

The SMILE kicked off in March 2008 where it organized the ASTIG (Asosasyon sa mga Tiggama). It also organized membership and identified the leaders for the market matching and linking agri products among the target beneficiaries.

Eight ASTIG units were organized in the communities of Kiotoy, San Nicolas, Malabog, Fatima, Indangan, Panunlungan and Mudiang. The ASTIG units at present are engaged in corn trading, rice trading in bulk, and buy and sell of vegetables and fruits.

She said their repayment rate was at 97 percent and borrowers payment were done weekly even as she attributed the high rate with their unique "sitdown" approach, where technical support staff engage in a one-on-one monitoring and support to those borrowers on default, come up with a doable scheme until such time that the payment becomes active.

Epal said they started with this program in 2002 with only P250,000 as initial fund window. Now they have 4,000 beneficiaries around the island of Mindanao with total fund exposure of P20 million.

Epal said the P20 million fall under their program on DREAMS (Development Resources Thru Entrepreneurship Alternative Management System). Sixty percent of the fund is dedicated to Alalayan or Alalay Sa Kabuhayan, a program for low income families.

The BFI, she said, was being supported by the Foundation for a Sustainable Society, Inc. (FSSI).

Miriam Azurin, advocacy officer of FSSI, said the foundation was supported by the Swiss government through fund allocation of US$ 14 million in 1995 that financed projects geared towards sustainable economic development of marginalized communities in the Philippines. In 2008 total fund accounted to US$ 81.1 million.

She said the projects that they supported through loans or grants must focus on eco-enterprise resource that carries the triple bottom lines on economic viability, social equity and ecological soundness.

As of 2008, Azurin said it had a total beneficiaries of 183 eco-enterprises both for loans and grants with total portfolio of P443 million.

She said FSSI was the recipient of the proceeds of a debt reduction agreement between the governments of the Philippines and Switzerland in 1996.

The agreement was a result of a joint lobby effort between Swiss and Philippine NGOs. (PNA) PDB