26. July 2006
Human Mosaic for Peace: Silliman University,Philippines Celebrates World Population Day
Heart warming and Enlightening Event with Concerts, Inspirational Talks, Essay and Poetry Competitions
Candlelights gilded the amphitheater. People,young and old, with their candles held high, made a human mosaic with the sign of peace. A local band lead the inspirational song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Students, teachers, administrators joined the rest of humanity in hoping for a better world.
Silliman University, SWI’s partner institution in the Philippines, commemorated the annual celebration of the World Population Day with much passion and commitment to encourage each and every one to do their share in the achievement of the Millenium Development Goals. Aside from creating the Human Mosaic for Peace, Silliman with the support of SWI and UNFPA, also organized essay and poetry competitions to enable young students to express their creative thoughts and opinions on population and development issues.
The winning pieces are posted below:
World Population: Counting the Youth Towards Positive Change
Winning piece by Lyle Jon Layos, Engineering Student
Was it not God who said in the Book of Genesis, “….. Go and multiply…..”? Ironic so it seems that the plans of God for man to fill the earth might eventually cause us our ultimate elimination on the face of this planet. But the command of God did not merely require the habitation of the entire planet, instead it purposely rewarded man a greater challenge: to be the stewards of His creation.
A millennium has passed since the creation of this world and the earth has been covered by almost 6 billion people according to studies conducted in year 2000. The world we live in has become a maltreated wasteland due to the ballooning of our population and the advancement of our technology. Our denuded forests have justly rewarded us with flashfloods and erosions of entire mountainsides claiming lives in the process. Our sweet-smelling sanitary landfills are claiming victims of hepatitis, cholera, population and many more will die. Our resources have been dwindling down because of our population boom sucking the very life of our beloved planet. Our reservoirs are drying up and fewer people have access to potable water. Food is getting scarce. Who is responsible for all this? We are.
So where can we start? Education should be top priority. It should be the most important building block of our nation. We should fortify our basic education and aim for excellence to eliminate illiteracy. We shouldn’t just be contented with learning ABC’s and one, two, threes. It should extend beyond that scope of thinking. Our educators should extend efforts to promote stewardship: taking care of our environment as much as we take care of our lavish lifestyle. The present drive to promote sexual awareness should not be taken for granted as well. We know for a fact that we should be responsible citizens in the control and reduction of population growth. The truth to the matter is that we are often given answers to problems in our society but we lack the necessary understanding and the true compassion needed to fuel our drive for positive change locally and worldwide. The youth should be taught and shown responsibility not just in the sexual issues of our society but of economic issues as well. Oil prices have sharply risen and despite having the peso gaining strength, does not allow us to squander our meager blessings. We need tremendous funding to feed a whole lot of people. We know that the government simply cannot cater to everybody’s needs. In a local scenario this has resulted in the mass production of health workers looking for jobs and working abroad just to uplift the condition of our families. Responsibility concerning finances is a must. More often than not, we are wasting a lot of our resources on the non-essentials of life. These should be balance in the way we spend.
So why target the youth? The cliché, “the youth is the hope of our motherland”, should never be taken for granted. It should then be our weapon to combat negative changes in our world from socio-economic problems to hunger to overpopulation and illiteracy. For one, the youth have so much more years to make up for their mistakes. People with age are much harder to convince of trying new things. Younger people on the other hand are not afraid to try newer solutions to age-old problems which have plagued us time immemorial. Second, younger people have more energy that people with age. They have the zeal to make progress a reality. This energy if geared towards a goal for positive change fueled with well-planned programs of education, awareness concerning family planning, health, environmental programs and the like will surely put us in the right track in our plans for improvement and change. Age should therefore not hinder young people from making a great achievement in this world. Third, people who have been taught to be responsible early on in their live sill pass on their love for God and for the planet and for humankind in general to their offspring. With this in mind we also eliminate negative behavior in our society. We create a more loving, more caring generation of people who understand the roles thymus fill for the general good of everyone in this world.
It was Neil Armstrong who popularized the phrase, “One small step for man….one giant leap for mankind….” We can’t make great changes all a once with long strides but instead we can start from smaller steps and gradually, as we gain our footing, increase the pace until we are well on our way to a better society.
DECADES
Poetry Winning piece
R. E. Bolivar II – Kapunungan ng mga Mass Communicators
1945
In the decadence of war, you bid
mother goodbye and her tears became
your epiphany
while you
crawled on bushes and wished for
her embrace.
1986
In the decadence of uncertainty, you bid
mother goodbye and flocked with the people
on EDSA
after you learned the body of best friend Jun
drenched on his own blood
and the whole nation mourned.
2006
In the decadence of deception, you bade
mother goodbye to become among of
your kin
your words etch history and your cries
are their cries and the nation
shared your tears.