Teams to help improve Metro Cebu

CEBU, Philippines - Young citizens of Cebu were mobilized to contribute to making Metro Cebu a livable and sustainable metropolis under the Mega Cebu Project of the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI).

Seventeen teams of college students who are scholars of RAFI’s Young Minds Academy Season 6 have been immersed in different local government units within Metro Cebu to make an assessment of the livability and sustainability of their assigned community, identify areas of improvement in terms of urban development and recommend ideas for further development.

Evelyn Nacario-Castro, executive director of the Eduardo Aboitiz Development Studies Center of RAFI, said the outputs of the students, which will be in the form of a proposed project, will be presented to the Metro Cebu Development Coordinating Board on November this year.

During the Young Citizens Forum yesterday at the EADSC, the students presented their assessment based on the Mega Cebu Project Matrix profiling the community according to its municipal services, environment, governance, economic development and employment, basic social services and ownership of lands.

Common concerns they have identified are in traffic and transportation, environment, water and watershed management and public safety.

Castro said that these concerns identified by their scholars matches the top 10 areas of concerns that MCDCB has identified in order to create the Mega Cebu.

“Hearing from them, we’ve confirmed our initial concerns. What they have found are affirmations of what we, adults, have also gathered so far,” Castro said.

YMA is in its sixth year this year and the theme for this season is urban development.

Castro said that at this early, they are training these students in urban planning and development.

Applying the YMA principle to not only teach the young people about theories, but allow them to see and experience for themselves what is happening in the real world. These students have immersed in the community and asked to recommend projects that they think will make their assigned community livable and sustainable.

“We want to emphasize the role of young people to become not just beneficiaries in the community but people who help shape the community,” Castro said.

Castro said that they hope to draw out innovative ideas from the young minds, innovations that are different from what is being done right now.  (FREEMAN)