Mark your calendars please and keep September 24-26 free! These are the dates for the LIWANAG World Festival 2015 to be held at the Provincial Capitol of Cebu.
The LIWANAG World Festival was initiated by MISSION, the Movement of Imaginals for Sustainable Societies through Initiatives, Organizing, and Networking, a civil society movement consisting of volunteers from different professions that leads various initiatives with the hope of transforming our society into greater livability and sustainability in the fields of education, environment, culture, healthcare, women's and children's rights, agriculture, entrepreneurship, urbanization, and governance.
According to their press release, "the LIWANAG World Festival is a gathering of societal groups and movements in culture, economy and politics from all over and outside the Philippines and is intended to encourage the participants to collectively reflect on where they are now, what they're doing to transform the world, and what is emerging among them as new ways to be relevant, effective, and cohesive.
The event will be a chance for the civil society groups and individuals to reflect on the following questions:
How do we see the relationships among the business sector, the government sector, and civil society needing to change to serve the greater good of Cebu, the country, and the planet? Are we making the difference we have been hoping and called to make? What, as change agents, can we discover together that could not be done so alone?
The first LiWANAG World Festival was held in Davao City in 2013 and focused on the most creative and innovative initiatives doing transformative work in the world. In 2014, MISSION held LIWANAG World Festival in Iloilo City a few months after Yolanda struck the country to assess, learn from each other, and come up with ecosystem solutions and a stronger network of groups to better prepare for and meet the challenges of natural disasters and climate change.
This year's theme of LIWANAG World Festival is CO-CREATING A NEW PHILIPPINES: The Next Step for Innovative Societal Movements in Transforming a Nation.
This year's festival enjoins civil society groups and movements to look over the historical, present, and emerging landscape of societal movements in culture, economy, and politics, and to reflect on these questions: Is the world a better place to live in? Is a positive future for our children and their children seven generations over more secure? Is our planet safer, our human community more peaceful, more loving? If none of this is true, should we be shifting the way we do what we're doing or doing something completely different?
The objectives of this year's LIWANAG are: 1) Go Inside. Engage in a deeper inquiry around the questions that matter to us most. 2) Go Across. Connect with other individuals, organizations, and networks to experience oneness and wholeness. 3) Go Deep. Reach a level of compassion and care for each other and others in the system. 4) Go Vast. Jump into the void, the unknown, the mystery to mine for the next discovery, the next leap of understanding, imagination and resolution that will stimulate movements to grow. 5) Go New. Discover and commit to the new ways to achieve the aims that we and all our movements set out for – a better world, a safer planet, a more secure and happy future for our future generations, a more loving and evolving human species. 6) Go Together. Take the next step on our evolutionary path, together.
Likeminded people with similar vision and passion are invited to participate in this event and to disseminate information about the event to other likeminded souls.
For inquiries and any form of communication, interested groups and individuals may contact Teresa Dosdos Ruelas, Co-Founder and Co-Convenor at +63-915-647-4666 orteresa_22@mac.com or Dean Ruth Mercado, Communication Consultant at +63-923-162-0362 or of LIWANAG World Festival or visit their website which is www.liwanagworldfest.net."
As our country will be going through another electoral process soon, marking the end of the term of PNoy and the beginning of a new administration, you may wish to join other participants for this September 2015 LIWANAG World Festival in Cebu and together, ignite enough enthusiasm and commitment to serve as guiding light for urgent united steps ahead for our people and our country, for all.