I Am Blogie

[Media Release]

Designer Villages Challenge: A Global Campaign for Climate Adaptability

(Manila, Philippines) — The Philippines is pioneering a project on climate change adaptation aimed at building communities that would not only be sustainable but also be prepared to deal with the adverse impacts of climate change.

The project, Designer Villages Challenge, is the country’s contribution to the celebration of the United Nations Year of Climate Change.

Led by Provincial Governor of Camarines Sur L. Ray Villafuerte, the Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation and the My Shelter Foundation, the project unites government agencies, different non-government organizations (NGOs), and academic institutions to launch this Philippine initiative on Climate Adaptation.

According to the Global Climate Index, Philippines is one of the ten most afflicted countries in the world in terms of impact in the number of lives and property lost as a result of damage due to climate, and these are mainly in the form of increasing intensities of typhoons visiting the islands annually. This is due mainly to the high vulnerability of rural areas and very little capacity for adaptation (attributed to poverty and lack of awareness on the rising dangers) of the people at risk.

These upcoming humanitarian disasters, and potentially mass migration, will lead to a high state of conflict and insecurity for the 70 percent rural and 40 percent poor living below the poverty line.

The Designer Villages Challenge will focus on selected climate hotspots in the Philippines, Camarines Sur, a province located in the Bicol region that is frequently devastated by typhoons.

The Manila Observatory, a private non-stock, non-profit, scientific research institution, recently completed a study on the future challenges of climate in the Naga region, which indicate the growing intensity and shifting typhoon pattern to the south of the archipelago (Visayas and Mindanao) with the path affecting thousands of unprepared communities unused to these types of storms.

The study has inspired the building of a redesigned low-income community which will be the new blueprint of how people in the vulnerable coastal and rural areas and cities can successfully cope with impacts of climate variability. The knowledge generated from the study will also facilitate the development of policies that address these humanitarian challenges.

Part of the campaign is a competition that would invite architects and planners to contribute to rural adaptability to climate change impacts in the form of architectural resiliency to strong typhoon, winds and heavy rains. It is an “Architects Wanted Ad” to encourage the best minds in the world to sketch up new blueprints for low income (US$2,000 below) housing that is both disaster resistant and sustainable.

Capacity building in the present social networks such as community, non-government, and government organizations involved in these areas will allow a shift into post-disaster mitigation to preparing ahead of the storm.

The main hypothesis of this project is having safer structures ahead of time that will lead to less injury, number of climate refugees, and loss of life and property.

The project’s main partner and beneficiary is Gawad Kalinga, the largest and most active non-government slum upgrading and rural community builders in Asia who will be using the new blueprint for villages in critically vulnerable areas designs. The top three winners of the competition will win monetary awards. In addition, all top three designs will be built, in partnership with three separate prototype master-planned communities of 30 houses each as envisioned by their authors.

The competition brief, which would explain how the villages will be designed based on the key points of climate change challenges, data on the site and province, among others, is still being finalized by the United Architects of the Philippines, Gawad Kalinga and My Shelter Foundation.

The first press launch will be at the Institute of international Education (IIE) where Illac Diaz, a Hubert Humphrey Fellow and lead proponent of the global adaptability challenge, and Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga, will be speaking before invited guests from the United Nations, architecture magazine editors and institutes for architecture to inform them of the current Philippine challenges for climate adaptability. He will be accompanied by a delegation of Philippine governors, mayors, and climate experts who would like to call attention to the Philippine Imperative for Climate Adaptation.

WHAT IS THE DESIGNER VILLAGES CHALLENGE?

The global Designer Villages Challenge is a powerful collaboration of service and leadership between Gawad Kalinga and My Shelter Foundation in the bid to provide innovative housing and community solutions that empower people and are adaptive to the present challenges of climate change.

In January of this year, the Philippines’ largest low-cost community builders, Gawad Kalinga, mounted a local design competition, challenging senior architecture and interior design students to raise the bar of excellence for GK communities around the country and the world by harnessing their talents and skills into building the most beautiful, environment-friendly and sustainable GK villages for the poorest of the poor who otherwise cannot afford their services. May 8, 2009 was the last day of submission of entries and awarding will be in September of this year.

Similarly and exactly the year before, My Shelter Foundation together with its partners, Gov. L Ray Villafuerte, the National Disaster Coordinating Council, the Private Sector Disaster Management Network and the United Architects of the Philippines mounted an international competition with the vision of culling emergent technologies from the world’s architects who can create sustainable new design solutions for schools to improve the overall learning conditions of the children, and to revolutionize the blueprint in making the structure resilient to strong and typhoons. The winning design is a sustainable bamboo school by Eleena Jamil of Malaysia which began construction at the Nato Elementary School area last May 15, 2009.

This year, these two engines for changing Architecture For low-income communities, one for better sustainable design and one for disaster resiliency, together with Gov. Lray Villafuerte, the United Architects of the Philippines and other government and non-government partners, a new challenge in 2009 is presented to local and international architects, designer and planners when they are brought together through a competition platform to find solutions to the problem of obsolete, low-cost residential building designs in the developing word in the midst of climate change. It is hoped that a broader international network base will bring in around 2,000 design entries to complete a full master plan of a climate resilient community for rural areas of the country. The scope of the design will be based on master planning a low-income community of 30 houses based on affordability (<$2,000 USD), typhoon and earthquake resistance, sustainable development, innovative construction technology, scalability and flexibility of use.

This project is in honor of the 90th year anniversary of the Fulbright Program and the 30th year anniversary of the Hubert Humphrey Program. The Fulbright Program promotes leaders who unite the world through a dialogue of peace and understanding through educational exchange.

The Designer Villages Challenge will have its 1st press launch on June 16, 2009 at 4:30PM at the Institute of International Education at the United Nations Plaza in New York. The following will be speaking: Allan E. Goodman, President, Institute of International Education (IIE), Consul General Cecilia B. Rebong, Tony Meloto of Gawad Kalinga, Governor Lray Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, Philippines and Illac Diaz, founder of My Shelter Foundation and alumnus of the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program.

Another year has rolled in for one of the most anticipated online activities for bloggers — the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs. This project, initiated by Janette Toral, is now on its third year.

Bloggers are encouraged to come up with their list of 10 new blogs (created anytime from May 2008 onwards) that they think have the potential to become influential in their sphere or chosen genre. What’s interesting is that, this writing project has become a vehicle upon which new blogs do become influential by virtue of their nominations.

The project is now on its third week. Each week, Janette aggregates all the nominations and outputs a running total of all the nominated blogs. Head on over to the Influential Blogger site and join this worthwhile activity!

I’m happy to announce that the gang of Mindanao Bloggers and their supporters will soon be commencing plans and arrangements for WordCamp Philippines 2009! I will be calling the first organizational meeting within the following week.

It has yet to be officially finalized, but I’m excited to let everyone know that we’re working with the Asian Institute of Management to have this prestigious school be the host and venue for WordCamp this year. Thanks to Jayvee Fernandez and Regnard Raquedan for the invaluable support!

Bueno, let’s get the ball rolling!

We are now calling for volunteers for the various committees (logistics, tech, food & refreshments, etc). If you would like to be a speaker at WordCamp, let me know! And if you have suggestions on topics to be presented / discussed at WordCamp, do leave a comment right here.

Further announcements shall be posted on WordCamp.ph, the official site, whose domain name is sponsored by dotPH. More generous sponsors — we welcome you!

While the site is still being completed, we’re already working our behinds off to ensure another successful WordCamp!

Meanwhile, to my fellow Dabawenyos, we will soon be putting together more WordPress seminars (basic- and advanced-level sessions) before the summer is over within the next few weeks. Please refer to this blog for the schedules. And, yes, there will most probably be a Davao leg for WordCamp, just like last year.

Blog on!

Sponsored By: 1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit - 27 Oct 2007, Davao City

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
This feed is for the exclusive use of the publishing site, Blogie Blog. The unauthorized use of this feed is an infringement of copyright.
(Digital Fingerprint: 8b28c01dc97422ca3167f44d6f989be3 (74.125.44.136) )

To the lovely readers who leave comments on my blog, I give you back link-love! (That is, if you provide a site URL along with your comment.) Take a look at the left-hand sidebar, below “Latest Posts”: commenters’ names are linked to their own sites, without the rel=’nofollow’ attribute.

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
This feed is for the exclusive use of the publishing site, Blogie Blog. The unauthorized use of this feed is an infringement of copyright.
(Digital Fingerprint: 8b28c01dc97422ca3167f44d6f989be3 (74.125.44.136) )

It was a very engaging dinner and get-together I had last night with Nick Wilwayco and her colleagues in Smart Communications. They were in town for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) project by Smart, and Nick took the opportunity to meet me and discuss a SmartBro issue I had raised earlier. She made good on her word to help me follow it up with the SmartBro people.

Being part of a different department within Smart, Nick really went out of her way to address my problem, and I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Nick, Judee and Haydee for that wonderful evening!

At Krua Thai last night, I was also apprised of some of what Smart is currently accomplishing in terms of CSR. Coincidentally, their ongoing project involved a blogger friend of mine, Kring Elenzano, who delivered a presentation to a group of Visayas- and Mindanao-based teachers and students on Internet videography. Smart is conducting a nationwide series of educational programs that hope to enable disenfranchised students and educators to get up to speed in the world of Internet citizenship.

What I find admirable is this telecommunications company’s commitment to conduct outreach programs that benefit the less fortunate. I wholeheartedly agree with what Nick and her colleagues said about developing the talent of schoolchildren in underdeveloped areas: that they can very well be the source of wonderful ideas. Who knows what these kids can accomplish given the right resources?

But what I find even more admirable is the dedication that I could clearly see in the three smart women I was with last night. Smart’s CSR programs are certainly in the right hands!

Sponsored By: DVO Bloggers Network - the Davao blogosphere

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
This feed is for the exclusive use of the publishing site, Blogie Blog. The unauthorized use of this feed is an infringement of copyright.
(Digital Fingerprint: 8b28c01dc97422ca3167f44d6f989be3 (74.125.44.136) )

I’ve noticed that Philippine-made iPod touch / iPhone applications have been consistently featured in the Apple App Store’s list of Top 25 (paid apps) for a couple of weeks now. In fact, the #1 as of this writing is an application called Filipino iPhone Community or FiC, an app that allows FiC members “to check the latest posts in the [applei.ph] forums, as well as access the LiveChat feature of the site.”

Another one in the Top 25 is iManila, which is by the same developer of FiC, MangCode.com. iManila is an online directory for finding businesses, stores, etc., retrieving contact information and other details from EYP. (I hope they’ll come up with a directory for Davao City as well as for other Philippine cities in the near future.)

It seems that the number of iPhone / iPod touch users in the Philippines is steadily increasing, and that the downloading of apps among Filipinos is now as commonplace as using ebay or Amazon. Judging by comments and reviews on paid apps posted by Filipino users in the App Store, I think it’s safe to assume that there’s a steady stream of good business happening for Apple.

Personally, I have purchased quite a number of apps for my iPod touch, from games to productivity software, even a couple of audiobooks. I’m so glad that the App Store is open to the Philippine market, unlike iTunes, which remains closed to us.

I understand that there are copyright issues covering US-published music, hence the inaccessibility of iTunes from the Philippines. But with the healthy activity going on in the App Store, wouldn’t it be good business sense for Apple to make at least certain parts of iTunes open to us? Podcasts and audiobooks, for example.

Having the ability to download more content into my iPod would certainly increase its worth as a companion gadget. More than just a device for playing music and videos, turning the iPod touch into a content-rich ebook reader would be very welcome indeed.

Sen. Manuel Villar (Nacionalista Party), who is expected to run for president of the republic in 2010, is in the public eye for charges of unethical behavior brought against him by Sen. Jamby Madrigal, who has recently brought to light evidence that the former has personally benefited from a public works project. Apparently, Villar owns or [...]

I am all for Japanese cuisine, but I also love spicy food. I speak Nihongo and I have immersed myself in the Japanese culture since I was a kid, but when it comes to food, I sometimes cross the Sea of Japan to Korea. See, aside from wasabi there’s not much else that’s spicy in the usual Japanese fare…

But when it comes to Korean cuisine, hot spices reign supreme!

It had been a long time since the last time I had kimchi, so it was a very welcome treat when I had dinner for the first time at Sigol Bap Sang with some bloggers.

At Sigol Bap Sang, they serve Banchan, or a set of appetizers to get your taste buds going. It’s free, and you can even ask for refills. I especially liked the fermented beans and the potato strips. Surprisingly, I also quite enjoyed the shallots; I am not a fan of onion at all, but that night, I ate so much of the stuff! And their kimchi — it made me ecstatic! I’m not an expert on Korean cuisine, but I can daresay that Sigol Bap Sang’s food is authentic (because Koreans run the place) and worthy of any food critic’s praise.

There’s a new item on my favorites list now, and it’s a spicy red noodle soup with beef and various vegetables, called Yukejang (₱250). Its distinctively Korean taste really livened up the entire dining experience at Sigol Bap Sang. I loved the way the ingredients were fresh and cooked to perfection (no soggy veggies and what not). I just wish they made it even more spicy… One serving is good for 3 to 4 people.

The rice dish that we had, Bibimbap (₱200), was something new for me too. One of the restaurant owners came by after it was served and did the honors for us. He expertly folded the eggs and vegetables into the rice and mixed in the red bean paste that gave it that zing. He also poured in a little sesame oil, which, Brendel told us, Koreans use a lot in their cooking. One order of this savory dish serves 2 to 3.

One of the dishes we ordered that I didn’t really enjoy (but which Brendel really liked) was the Dok Bokki (₱600). It’s a dish of rice cakes and vegetables. I don’t know, but the taste somehow reminded me of instant noodles… Maybe if it were spicy, then I might’ve gotten to like it. It’s a huge serving, hence the price.

The only recognizable dish for me — aside from kimchi — was the Bulgogi (₱300), which Sigol Bap Sang really knows how to prepare. The beef was tender and tangy, just a tad sweet but really tasty. It wasn’t spicy, though. The owner said they have another beef dish that’s really spicy, and that’s what I’m going to have the next time I dine at Sigol Bap Sang.

The restaurant is located in a small arcade across the highway from the Grand Regal Hotel (you’ll see a Merco bakeshop and a Korean grocer in that arcade). It’s in Lanang, approaching the intersection of J.P. Laurel Ave. and R. Castillo St. The place is not very big, with about 9 booths and a long table on one side of the restaurant. Service is prompt and the waitstaff seem to be well-informed of their food offerings.

They’re open daily, from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Their landline number is 300-8989.

WordPress 2.7, which introduced major changes to the platform’s core, was released only recently, and now there’s another significant upgrade on the horizon: version 2.8. It’s still fresh in beta 1 status (Matt hasn’t even chosen a jazz musician to name it after yet).

Still, WP2.8 is already looking to be a very welcome upgrade. Number one on the list: automatic theme installations. I’m beta testing it now, and the built-in theme installer seems to be working just fine. Much like the automatic plugin installation functionality, the theme installer lets you search for themes (that exist in the WordPress.org directory) from within your dashboard, and get your chosen theme up & running in no time. The theme search facility is pretty accurate, too. You can search by keyword, tag, and/or author, either by manually entering the keywords or selecting predefined values.

There is also a way for you to upload and install theme .zip files that are already sitting in your hard drive. No need to go to your web host’s control panel file manager any longer. Whew! Now that’s what I call a content management system to beat!

More on WP as a serious CMS: themes templates and plugin codes are now presented to you in technicolor. OK kidding aside, editing theme templates are now easier on the eyes because of what Automattic calls CodePress syntax highlighting. It’s now easier to sift through templates’ codes, thanks to basic color differentiation of PHP, HTML and normal text. Nothing like what you might expect in industry-strength code editors, but it’s a start.

All in all, WP2.8 will be a major enhancement and a collection of bug fixes and security patches — all in the effort to make using WordPress much more user-friendly and yet powerful. Here’s a list of the new features we can expect from this upcoming upgrade. Can’t wait for the final release!

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
This feed is for the exclusive use of the publishing site, Blogie Blog. The unauthorized use of this feed is an infringement of copyright.
(Digital Fingerprint: 8b28c01dc97422ca3167f44d6f989be3 (74.125.44.136) )

The much-anticipated annual exercise initiated by Janette Toral in 2007 is now upon us once more, and the blogosphere is again abuzz with bloggers and their top 10 offerings. Each year, the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs writing project catapults into fame new blogs that have a great potential to influence thought and opinion in the blogosphere and beyond.

And so, in an attempt to contribute to this worthy endeavor, here are my top 10 choice picks (not listed in any order). According to the rules, these are blogs that were created on or after 1 May 2008.

A Photographic Saga: Photography and Lifestyle

Leonard Pe is an accomplished photographer, and this blog is his expression. He definitely has an eye for composition, and everything else that comes naturally to talented photographers. His blog is certainly one that can become an inspiration to other photographers.

Batang Lakwatsero

The Batang Yagit recounts experiences of his travels in this new blog. Winston, although he professes to be from very modest roots, is destined to go places, so I think his new blog will be an interesting read now and in the future.

The Philippine Blog Press

This new blog aims to be a news portal that covers bloggers’ activities, blogging events, and other readables regarding the Philippine blogosphere.

RP Elections 2010 – The Election Watchblog

A community blog, RP2010.com hopes to deliver timely news and opinion regarding the upcoming electoral exercise in the Philippines this May 2010, and thus become a useful resource for Filipino voters.

Regnard Raquedan: Self-Titled

This self-titled personal blog is owned by Regnard Raquedan, a Web & Usability consultant. Think UX — user experience for websites, that’s Regnard’s domain.

The Thirsty Blogger

I love this food blog’s name! And I love the fact that it focuses on drinks in particular. I hope this blog will gain more popularity in the coming months! (There’s another blog whose name I also admire: A Scientist in the Kitchen. Too bad, though, because that blog was started in 2007, so I can’t nominate it here any longer.)

Patay Gutom

It seems foodie bloggers have a penchant for coming up with catchy blog titles, and Patay Gutom tops ‘em all! A group effort, it’s not far-fetched to think that this blog will go far indeed (what with the appetites of the member bloggers).

Father Blogger Dot Com

It’s refreshing to see a personal blog written from the point of view of a father. For some reason, there’s a dearth of such blogs… I’m sure Father Blogger will become a helpful resource for fathers and would-be fathers.

Let’s Go Sago!

Let’s Go Sago! is a travel blog, and a personal journal of an adventurer. The blogger relates his travel experiences, as well as his excursions into various cuisines.

New Media Philippines

A marketer’s blog, I think New Media Philippines has the potential to provide invaluable knowledge to those in the marketing arena, as well as to businessmen who would like to be kept abreast of this field of expertise.

That’s it! I hope my selections make it to the final Top 10!

Copyright © 2009, Oliver Robillo.
This feed is for the exclusive use of the publishing site, Blogie Blog. The unauthorized use of this feed is an infringement of copyright.
(Digital Fingerprint: 8b28c01dc97422ca3167f44d6f989be3 (74.125.44.136) )