UNESCO in Action: Spearheads a Campus Media Workshop

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) held a two-day Campus Media workshop last May 27 and 28 held at Department Foreign Affairs (DFA) summit lounge, Pasay City. Eighty secondary school paper advisers nationwide were the participants of the program. The workshop tends to promote relevance of campus media coverage of UNESCO programs and activities in education, Science and Technology, Social and Human Sciences, Culture and communication, and of course attaining the Millennium Development Goals.

The conference also gave an emphasis to the campus media’s role and contribution to quality Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Value, respect and preserving the achievements of the past; Building a better place to live in and being a good exemplar citizen locally, nationally and globally is what ESD is all about.

Campus press, as an influential organization in school, may help in informing the studes and school members about the related programs and advocacies of UNESCO with the help of Associated School Projects (ASP) as their working arms in the Philippines.

Ms. Ma. Victoria F. Punay, project assistant for culture Unesco NatCom of the Philippines, cites a cultural sector presentation discussing the world heritage sites in the Philippines. The primary objective of this is to extend the awareness of conserving our world heritage and to inform its sites in the Philippines. Ms. Punay also tackled the two classifications of heritage; the Cultural which involves monuments, groups of buildings and sites such as works of men or the combined works of nature and man and the National Heritage which embodies the physical, Biological, Geological and Physiographical formations. But these two are fragile and have been threatened to disappear forever by various reasons and factors like World War I and II, Urbanization, Climate Change and Natural disasters.

With the acronym UNESCO having three branches, specifically Science, the Science and Technology sector was tackled in the fourth session of the program by Dr. Roly P. Encarnation the NCMS consultant. “Global Warming/Climate Change: The Philippine Scenario” was the theme presented by the latter. With a very detailed Microsoft PowerPoint presentation similar to what Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth like , he profoundly explained every nook and cranny regarding this one “disturbing, but real” subject from questions spanning the meaning of global warming to ways on how to solve it.

These are some questions regarding the four subjects, preceded and answered in the session; all extensively explained and received:

1. What is Global Warming?

1. The Greenhouse Effect
2. The three gas contributors to Global Warming

1. What are the effects of Global Warming?

1. What is the assessed sea level rise due to the increase in the global mean temperature?
2. What causes global sea level rise?
3. Are there projections for further warming?
4. What are the expected impacts?
5. How can individuals help to mitigate the adverse impacts of global warming?

1. Global Change Slideshow (Melting of the glaciers, glacial retreats, etc.)

1. Sea level rises and possible impacts

1. What to expect in the 21^st century?

1. What are the manifestations/signals of global warming in the local scale?

1. Philippines vulnerabilities to global warming/climate change. (READ: Highly susceptible to typhoons)

1. Highly susceptible to ground movements
2. Highly susceptible to flooding and mundations
3. Threat in food security

1. What can we all do to mitigate global warming and climate change?

1. Activities we can do to help
2. Promoting public awareness

Our Earth, our future, our choice. Easier said than done? Maybe, but in the end, it falls up to you whether to shut up or move out.

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