“Palamantasan ng Sarap” — a witty play of words, don’t you think? The idea, according to Cheez Whiz senior brand manager, Paolo Serrano, is to make an educational campaign more fun so that kids will take to it and, thus, learn from it. If you take a look at the Palamantasan website, you’ll know what they mean by engaging kids in a way that’ll get their attention.

At the launching of Palamantasan in Davao, which was held at the Buhangin Central Elementary School, several local grade schools participated in competitions that were designed to create awareness of nutrition issues. There were the usual contests, such as the Sabayang Pagbigkas (group speech contest), cheering, and essay-writing. There was also a unique event called “Jarchitecture“, where participating pupils unleashed their creativity in crafting buildings or robots made of empty Cheez Whiz bottles and caps.

The contest that I liked, though, was the Mom & Child Sandwich-Making Contest. There were three teams that competed at Buhangin Central, and it was fun to watch the pairs (two mom-and-daughter and one mom-and-son teams) concoct fancy- and yummy-looking healthy snacks.

“These schoolchildren are at the stage of developing a sense of responsibility,” explains Serrano. “This is why we want them to realize the significance of proper nutrition themselves — through a series of fun, creative and learning activities.”

Studies by the Philippine government have shown that millions of Filipino children are malnourished. That’s why, among the poorer sectors of society, it’s not uncommon to see ten-year-old kids looking like they were barely six. This could stem from the lack of education about proper nutrition in many Filipino families. What Kraft Foods has started, therefore, is worthy of praise.

I hope that many more big corporations, especially those involved in the food industry, will take it upon themselves to help eradicate the country’s nutrition problems. Better yet, it would be great for other companies to get on board and make a pledge to theh Palamantasan initiative. It will ultimately benefit them, too, because they would be ensuring a healthy workforce for the future.

As for schools that aren’t yet part of the program, they would do well to urge their students to join Palamantasan. I remember when I was in Grade School, it was always fun to take part in those fun-filled activities that involved food. Little did we know that we were in fact learning from the experience already! As Palamantasan has reminded me, the best way to get kids interested is to get their attention through exciting and challenging activities — and with a full stomach in the mix, the Cheez Whiz Palamantasan program certainly concocted the best formula!

It was a very fulfilling experience, seeing the unabashed interest and enthusiasm the seminar participants displayed during my entire 3-hour talk. I had feared they would fall asleep due to their lack of foreknowledge in technical stuff, but it wasn’t that way at all. And I’m glad for it, because I’m involved in activism myself, so I’m more than happy to help my brothers in arms get themselves equipped with today’s online tools.

It helped a whole lot that the WiFi access at the venue, Lantaka Hotel by the Sea, was more than adequate. There were more than 20 of us accessing the Internet and yet the bandwidth didn’t seem to suffer much. Thanks also to The Asia Foundation for providing laptops to those who weren’t able to bring their own.

The participants came from Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Cotabato, and other areas in Mindanao where Internet access isn’t all that reliable (to say the least). And yet, they embraced WordPress and knew instinctively what it could do for them. It was also very inspiring to see them immediately take to the other social media platforms presented to them by the other speakers. Twitter was a major hit!

I hope to continue this kind of WordPress evangelism, and hopefully I’ll be able to provide more hands-on training, especially for individuals and organizations who need to have their voices heard.

Some photos from the 2-day seminar held at Lantaka Hotel by the Sea, Zamboanga City.

I have promised to help the Digital Activism trainees further in their forays into the world WordPress. In particular, I will host any of them who might want to get a WordPress 3.0-powered website under the mindanaw.net domain.

Here’s the presentation I made for the seminar: Crash Course on WordPress.

Civil society in Southeast Asia hopes that this statement will reach the ears of the global IGF, the fifth of which will be held in September 2010 at Vilnius, Lithuania. We hope that issues that affect us will be given more weight in discussions during the 5th IGF. To learn more about the Internet Governance Forum, please click here.

I’m working on a Web project that’s built on WordPress 3.0 and that will take advantage of its multi-site functionality. It’s already live but not yet completed, and it’s on MINDANAW.net. It’ll be a site that will let dedicated bloggers of Mindanao have their own subdomained blogs. I’m still working on which plugins to deploy, as well as collecting WordPress themes (so far I’ve included free themes from Woothemes.com).

There’s going to be a catch, though: only blogs that commit to helping Mindanao, in one way or another, will be accepted. The service will be offered free of charge — just as long as the bloggers on board join the community in the advocacy of promoting peace & development in the Philippine South. I’ll announce the site’s launch once it’s ready via the Mindanao Bloggers Community site.

Kudos to Matt and his Automattic team for Thelonious (click the link to see a video of WP3.0).

Too bad, though, Matt Mullenweg wasn’t in town when I came calling — he was in Ireland then. But, I was happy to have finally met Maya Desai, who gave me a tour of their space in Pier 38. Here are some photos I took. I know, I know… I should’ve taken more. But I was just so excited to be there I neglected to do so.

The place is huge! And it doesn’t look anything like an office at all. The wide open spaces and the high ceiling gives it a comfortable, homey atmosphere. Maya tells me that it was actually meant to be a restaurant.

While in San Francisco, I was also able to spread the word about WordPress to a high school there. This was part of the IVLP, the San Francisco leg of which was arranged for me by the Institute of International Education, and it was for me the best part of the program.

At the high school, I was able to give a talk about blogging, WordPress, and the various opportunities online publishing presented to virtually anybody. It was a class of seniors, and it was very fulfilling indeed seeing the glimmer in the eyes of those young men and women. I hope that I was able to inspire at least a few of them to take up blogging and succeed in the endeavor.

On 19 October, I was invited to give a talk at e.AXS Communications — Zamboanga City’s very first contact center. e.AXS is a wholly Zamboangueño-owned and -operated enterprise, which is very laudable on the part of its investors. Once this company prospers, they will pave the way for other BPO operators to come in. They are gearing up for SEO projects, and so they invited me to share my experience in SEO work. And since they are already offering website development services, I took the opportunity to introduce to them all about WordPress (and its SEO-readiness).

Ryann, a graphics designer, videographer and WordPress user, presented Hola Zamboanga! and his other blogs to the same group. It is our hope that more Zamboangueños will take up blogging using WordPress.

Some photos of the get-together, courtesy of Ryann:

In Isabela City, I was able to meet high school and college students from different schools, thanks to my host, RJ Ian Sevilla (who has promised to get a WordPress blog as well). My time on the island of Basilan was very limited (only about 5 hours), but I have promised to be back for a WordPress seminar in the foreseeable future. I am looking forward to that because I could see the excitement in their eyes when I told them about blogging and WordPress.

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