Home 
CLOSE to 300 participants from the academe, government, private sector and civil society will gather at Silliman University today for the forum on climate change.
Another hundred will be gathered at the University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu City where the forum at the Silliman Hall will be transmitted live via videoconference.
Themed ?Climate Change: An Intergenerational Challenge,? the two-hour forum aims to facilitate a localized understanding of climate change, which is believed to be caused by several factors compounded over generations.
Addressing climate change requires a multi-sectoral approach and a collective response from individuals across ages, cultural affiliations and socio-economic orientations.
The forum launches the three-phase project that Silliman is leading for the Knowledge for Development Network, in partnership with USC and Central Philippine University (CPU) in Iloilo City.
The project, ?Multi-Sectoral Forum and Proposal Development on Investing on Young Minds for Household Solutions to Climate Change,? runs on a Panibagong Paraan knowledge-sharing grant from the World Bank (WB).
The panel of speakers include climate change experts, WB officials and a partner representative from Smart Communications Inc.
They are Silliman President Dr. Ben Malayang III, an expert in environmental sustainability and the one invited by the United Nations Development Programme to present in the Philippines the 2007-2008 Human Development Report themed ?Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world?; Dr. Angel Alcala, 1992 Ramon Magsaysay awardee and the Director of the Silliman University Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management; Dr. Hilconida Calumpong, director of the Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences at Silliman; Jan Bojo, WB?s sector leader for social, environment, and rural sustainable development in East Asia and the Pacific; Joe Tuyor, WB?s senior operations officer for the environment, Philippines; and Ramon Isberto, Public Affairs head of Smart.
The forum completes the first phase of the project.
The second phase is the conduct of fora on climate change in the campuses of Silliman, CPU and USC. The second phase will feature local experts and environmental advocates, and will include a lecture on proposal writing.
The main highlight of the project is the competition among students for the best proposals on household solutions to climate change. These are solutions that are practcal, cost-efficient and can easily be adopted and replicated in homes, schools or barangays.
Smart, the project?s private sector partner, will give P25,000 each to the best three proposals. The amount will serve as capital to pilot test the project.
Each school will select the top three proposals. Automatically, the students who developed the top two proposals will be invited to Silliman in April to defend their proposals to a panel of judges composed of climate change experts and project partners. They will have the chance to interact with the judges and seek advice on how to effectively carry out their proposals. Only the best three will receive the cash prize.
Smart?s commitment to this project reinforces the need for multi-sectoral partnership. It was tapped as partner following its strong public affairs program in the area of environmental advocacy which, particularly for its use of solar and wind energy to power off-grid cell sites, made it the first recipient of the Green Mobile Award from the Global System for Mobile Communications Association.
