Now that I have had the pleasure of helping to establish a new center in Iloilo City, I have moved on to another aspect of the Scala program. I recently spent a few days in Batangas City, Batangas with Sarah and the DSWD monitoring one of the Scala centers. This particular center began in 2004, has trained 7 batches of out of school youth (OSY) so far, and has just started on its eighth batch. This center is also interesting because it is run by the PSWDO (the provincial social welfare and development office), as opposed to the CSWDO (the city). [View Full Entry]

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Article for SCALA Thank You Booklet By Lisa White on August 9th, 2005 I can’t believe that my time in the Philippines has come to an end so quickly. The past 3½ months have passed in a flash - it doesn’t seem so long ago that I was sitting on the plane to Manila wondering what in the world I had gotten myself into! What an experience this has been, and I was only just getting started! From my short time here, I have learned more about myself, leadership, and development work, the intangibilities of which are impossible to put into [View Full Entry]

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Having finished my placement in Iloilo City and started work with Sarah at the national office, I have had a chance to reflect on my experiences (and mistakes) from the past several months. Overall, I believe that the main thing I have learned thus far is what makes a good leader. In my opinion, this is particularly important for development work, especially since capacity building depends to a great extent on how good a leader you are. So I have revised my original idea of what a leader is. Some of it is still classically what I consider a good leader, [View Full Entry]

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There's a huge market very close to where we live here in Manila and I thought I'd share some pictures of it with you. It's called Commonwealth market, and as you might suspect, it's along Commonwealth Avenue. As part of trying to live like Filipinos do (which I can never really do - after all, I know that I can leave anytime that times get really tough and I never really have to worry about going hungry or not having enough money to buy food for myself and my family), we try to get our food at the market instead of [View Full Entry]

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Okay, so I had a really interesting day today. The president's state of the union address was earlier today and a bunch of rallies were going on all over the city. Work was cancelled for all government workers (of which the DSWD is a part, so that meant we didn't go to work either), mostly because all of the main thoroughfares were blocked off by people and parked jeepneys and other vehicles. Luckily, there happened to be a rally just outside our neighbourhood on Commonwealth Avenue, so we went to check it out. Very, very interesting! The Filipinos definitely aren't as [View Full Entry]

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So the SCALA crew had a debriefing (sharing session) after our first placements this past few days in Bohol (province of). We arrived in Tagbilaran after taking an overnight ferry from Iloilo City (Andrea and I, that is), and then we headed of for the short trip to Panglao Island and Alona Beach. Awesome place! We could sit and have our meetings with the beach in the background and the sea breeze on our faces. It was great! And we got alot accomplished as well. I think it was the best set of meetings we've had so far. I learned alot [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday was the launching of our new SCALA center in Iloilo city. The mayor and other dignitaries of the city attended to sign the MOA (Memorandum of Agreement to provide funds and outline how the center is to function) and the OSY were there too to help celebrate. So it was a very exciting day! The computers arrived at our center just in the nick of time! We got them Friday from the port, and by Monday evening, we had 15 working computer units! Yay! [View Full Entry]

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Some pics of the Philippines. [View Full Entry]

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Okay, this is for my family and friends who want to know exactly what I am doing in the Philippines. What the heck am I doing in the Philippines, anyway? Well, I am working with Engineers Without Borders (EWB, www.ewb.ca if you want to check it out) on a project called SCALA (shared computer access locally and abroad, at www.scala.ewb.ca or http://proxy.dswd.gov.ph/scala). It is an ITC (information technology communication) project designed to give out of school youth (OSY) both computer and life skills training so that they can either go back to school or get a job. OSYs are between the [View Full Entry]

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So we had another meeting where we made Girl Scout promise cards. I was wrong about the scarves - the solid colours are for the younger girls and the stripes are for the older girls. And they have their choice of several colours of scarves - yellow, pink, blue, and green, I think. Their leader tells me that if they feel really adventurous, they'll try to get everyone wearing the same colour scarf on the meeting day! :) We also sang some songs. It's funny because with all of my travelling, I've never hooked up with a Girl Scout group that [View Full Entry]

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