Advocacy Building: Beyond Ourselves

Advocacy Building: Beyond Ourselves
Sheena Claire Bayeta reflects on her engagement in building a youth network for the environment. 



The basic rule of advocating is advocacy should start first within you. You cannot advocate, inspire, encourage and influence other people to support or defend a certain issue with you, if you yourself don’t take in the passion to commit. 

We educate ourselves to certain issues and engage; but in advocating, having the knowledge you have and experience, what then? 

I believe the best way to address an issue where the community is involved, is the community itself, particularly the youth, where as early as now, should be greatly aware of the current situations; and given the enthusiasm and idealism, we can create change.

On July 5, 2014, the Environmental Youth Committee under the Oro Youth Development Council organized a symposium regarding solid waste management as part of its lecture series for the year. 

The symposium was part of the advocacy campaign of the council to involve the youth in promoting urban sustainability and proper solid waste management, which should set out in the very basic unit of society which is the barangay.

Instead of a mere event, the symposium geared towards process-oriented where, before we enthusiastically and directly involve ourselves into a greater societal engagement, let us find out first the current situation and observe. 

Be aware of situation we are in today, recognize that we are part in it, look back the things that we have done so far and the things that we should have done so as to resurface the question: what should we do next?

I felt down after the event due to my personal struggles on seeing things and focusing too much on the greater picture rather than the pieces that make the picture.

 I can compare it to a painting where I can appreciate better the bigger picture after appreciating the different patterns, tile by tile and how they came up together; or a concept of a book after reading it page by page and how they relate to each other to come up with a wonderful story. 

Because of this anxiety, I was imposed by a question of “Is this for you or for them?” and “Are the things we are doing now for our own benefit or for the greater society?”. Rather than dwelling on the overall output of the symposium and our lapses, the feedback of the facilitators regarding their fruitful sharing, the output they came up and the invitations and praises from the schools and organizations is more than enough for me to realize that we are together in this greater engagement, that there is a response that we all have been waiting for and there is this opportunity of involvement and everyone is more than willing to cooperate for this greater cause.

Each of us has this inner potential, this capability to do more than we thought so. And being able to see almost 200 participants responding to the call, it was just so overwhelming. Seeing the interest of on some of the participants and concrete outputs produced, and even did more than we asked became a drive to push this series through. And this movement we are doing now boils down to our faith, to our values and what we are called to do.

USEP (Urban Sustainability and Environmental Youth Committee) is a committee spearheaded by youth who wants to involve and immerse themselves into an engagement focusing on advocacy. It gave us the opportunity to partner with government offices like CLENRO and SWM in creating a venue for the youth to engage. We cannot leave everything to the government and wait. Development happens not only because of political will but also because there is community involvement. But beyond the work, what then became of me? By grace, a servant leader whose heart continually burn for passion in service.

And a message to everyone, magpakabana kita sa mas dakong dagok para sa katilingban. Padayon Kauban!