Young and empowered: A model for youth governance

A youth organization in Cagayan de Oro is breaking ground to get the youth more involved in local governance.

In our social formation class, we were repeatedly taught that public governance is a shared responsibility. It is not only the work of people in office but also a duty of all citizens.

The quality of life of a society is inextricably linked to the quality of public governance. Thus, it's everyone's business to improve our public institutions.

Moved by the desire to do my fair share, I found myself volunteering in a coalition called the Kagayanon for Good Governance – Youth (KGG) in December of 2012.

It was a band of youth advocates who conduced voters’ education seminars and youth consultations in different barangays in preparation for the 2013-midterm elections. Its aim was not to only educate young voters but to craft a Local Youth Agenda. (Read: Filipino youth: Safeguard your 'patrimoney')

In the course of our weekly advocacy work, it made me see how passionate Filipinos are about elections. We pour intense emotions in politics especially when we associate ourselves deeply with our manok or political bet. It was indeed a noisy contest of passions.

But here lies our fault.

Our deafening noise before election day is equally matched by the deafening silence of our disengagement after election season. After we exhaust ourselves campaigning for a candidate, we go back to our private lives.

For the youth, we scroll our newsfeeds and stand satisfied that we rant our complaints about government in our statuses and nestle in our concept of activism by simply sharing the link of an advocacy page.

The youth is leaving the affairs of governance to the grown-ups and, maybe out of convenience, redefining activism as solely a virtual affair.

Socially innovating youth empowerment

In response to this need to make governance a more tangible, personal and interesting concept for the youth, KGG proposed to the newly elected Mayor Oscar S. Moreno the creation a youth council as the center-piece of the local youth agenda.

The idea was to allow a broader youth-base to participate in governance and in the process account the local leadership on their promises during elections.It is a proactive form of political engagement where we are given the opportunity to directly engage political power based on a youth agenda we ourselves articulate and at the same time amplify our individual advocacies at a citywide level.

The proposed council is composed of 17 youth representatives from 7 sectors, namely: in-school, out of school, youth with special needs, community-based, faith-based, and indigenous and moro youth.

With intense lobbying and a covenant signing with the new mayor before he took his oath, we finally came into formal arrangements with the City Social Welfare and Development Office and the National Youth Commission to organize the Oro Youth Leaders Convergence on March 22, 2014.

I managed to win a seat as part of the community-based sector and eventually won the chairmanship as interim chairperson. Following our election, city hall empowered us to craft the executive order ourselves constituting the youth council. This included defining our roles, duties and structure. It was a bottom-up approach of a different kind.

On May 18, 2014, the Mayor affixed his signature on Executive Order 072-14 and thus constituting the CDO Youth Development Council (OYDC) with the City Social Welfare and Development Office as our secretariat.

The unique feature of the OYDC is the institution of youth representatives in various local bodies of the city. I sit as youth representative in the Local School Board while my colleagues also sit on other city bodies such as the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, among others.

This does not only give the youth actual participation in crafting policies but it is also a door for the youth to learn and appreciate governance first hand in a broad range of concerns.

Youth public-private partnerships

Presently, the out-of-school youth and youth-with-special needs have been profiling and linking youth with disabilities and out-of-school youth to free skills development trainings. Our faith-based sector is also mentoring beneficiaries of the city scholarship program.

We have started to amplify our environment and disaster preparedness advocacies through citywide forums and barangay level education campaigns.

The community-based youth has been organizing and capacitating many barangay-based youth organizations including Moro and Indigenous youth to articulate their own barangay youth development agenda.

The In-school youth sector are also profiling establishments near schools in order to report the findings to the Regulatory and Complaints Board of the City among other engagements.

Alternative model

The OYDC has a long way to go. In its infancy, it has somehow laid the impression that the youth, if given the formal opportunity to participate, can concretely contribute to the strengthening of our public institutions.

The unfolding story of the OYDC hopes to serve as an alternative model for youth empowerment where existing organized youth groups, which are more cohesive, grounded and neutral, are given the tools to widen their advocacy and given a seat at the table of policy-making. In the long run, we hope that this can spur a culture of engaged citizenship among the young and a sense of communal ownership of the solutions as well as the challenges of the community.

This is our attempt to make our public institutions more inclusive by giving a youth leader from a far-flung barangay an equal chance as a student leader from a university to sit at the table of policy-making.

This is our attempt to make real the constitutional declaration that the youth is vital in nation-building.

Letter to City Council: Farm - to - Market Road

This has been received by the Office of the Vice Mayor on July 31, 2014 3:10 pm by a staff named Joy.

Oro Youth Letter to City Council Farm to Market Roads

Today, May 20, 2014 marks the official birthdate of the Oro Youth Development Council.

This moment was born from the efforts started a year before. The genesis of the Oro Youth Development Council began a year before the local elections with some school-based youth hopping from one barangay to the other doing voters education seminars. This youth group which later grew into the Kagayanon for Good Governance -Youth realized that the end goal of doing voters education is not just educating people how to vote but most importantly, what to do after the vote.

Office of the City Mayor Executive Order 072-14 by oroyouthcouncil

Engaging people we put in power (after the election) is the central philosophy of this movement. The OYDC is a movement incubated not within the walls of city hall but outside its walls - in the barangay halls, classrooms, chat rooms, living rooms and coffee shops of ordinary young citizens. With the victory of the new administration, the newly created space for civic engagement encouraged the youth to knock on the door of city hall and present the proposal. The Moreno Administration welcomed it with open arms. And the process of formalization commenced with the City Social Welfare and Development Office facilitating the way. Now that the Executive Order has been issued, the first phase of formalization is complete. We now begin the work of defining a new culture of youth activism in the community guided by the youth development agenda, which we ourselves articulated during our congress. And the next big step is institutionalization – that is making a Youth Code Ordinance that will make this mechanism permanent. That is a long way to go but we are hopeful that this would be our generation’s concrete contribution of building a governance philosophy that anchors itself on people’s participation and empowerment of the young.

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!

Youth Committee on Good Governance

Register here: http://bit.ly/1zrdEhf

All Kagay-anon Youth who believes that change can only be achieved if there is an organized and empowered reform-oriented constituency, join this committee! It will be organizing a series of forums, online discussions and advocacy campaigns in demanding and promoting good governance in our city. #oydc

CDO Situationer: Solid Waste Management

This was presented during the first of several series on the local environment
Youth Social Advocacy Series

Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000

The Regional Science High School Supreme Student Government

 CDO YOUTH ORG STORIES #oydc

Story 1: The Regional Science High School Supreme Student Government

Great Ideas, conceptual vision and simple innovations have made our team for what it is today. We may often be called as ‘event organizers’ and rule implementers. But one thing we can say, is that we are unique from other student councils. We are committed to serve the studentry in the best that we can, in helping the students to become more independent. Also, we are committed to lead the school, for it to become the best and model school not only in our region, but even in the whole nation.

We are leaders of Gusa Regional Science High School - X, the center of academic excellence in region X. We are the Supreme Student Government 2014 - 2015 officers. As of now, we have created the CIS (Central Information System) that ensures that the information dissemination is reliable, COCP (Council of Class Presidents) that connects all networks of the school and bridges the students to us, COT (Committee on Transparency) that guards the collection and secures the auditing procedure, and DRAW (Desk on Rights and Welfare) that  defends the helpless and invite volunteers advocating for peace.
We believe that nation building is not an individual task, but it is a collaborative effort with great people working for one vision and purpose. We are the Student Government.

Your Voice. Your Government.

Education Hardware Front: Progress Report on School Construction in CDO

Report School Board

Youth Engagement and Solid Waste Management

Solid Waste Mangement by oroyouthcouncil