This year, the Institute for Labor Studies (ILS) held the 3rd I-Gov Talks with the theme “Road to Resiliency: Addressing Questions that Inspire Actions” at the Labor Governance Learning Center, DOLE Executive Building last October 21, 2016.
Assistant Secretary Ma. Joji V. Aragon delivered the opening remarks: “We look at i-Gov Talks with appreciation as one of the ILS’ ways of keeping our minds on alert for new, creative, and inspiring thoughts and perspectives. The theme of resiliency for this forum underscores what President Rodrigo R. Duterte said in his very first State of the Nation address when he said that what he wanted was to ‘genuinely reduce the vulnerabilities of our people, build resiliency and empower individuals, and families and communities’.”
The theme of resiliency was underscored in the advocacies and actions of the invited speakers covering the subjects of Overseas Filipino Workers, environment, education, and the fight against corruption, and as they relate to the DOLE’s 8-Point Labor and Employment Agenda, specifically in alignment with enhancing and transforming DOLE into “an efficient, responsive, purposeful, and accountable institution,” that creates “responsive, enabling, and equitable labor policies, laws, and regulations.”
Three speakers have been invited to talk about their advocacies highlighting the keys to the resiliency of Filipinos and show the pathways to resilience-building among Filipinos: 1) Happy Feraren, Founder and CEO of www.bantay.ph, an anti-corruption web site (Question Topic: Why Make Wrong Things Right?”); 2) Cristina Liamzon, program coordinator of Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship Program for Overseas Filipinos and their Families (Question Topic: “Why Make Filipino Migrant Workers Drivers of Change?”); 3) Usec. Ma. Paz G. Luna of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (Question Topic: “Why Lawyer for the Environment?”); and 3) Ferdinand Lopez, professor, University of Sto.Tomas and faculty resource person for Philippine Cultural Education Program of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (Question Topic: “Why Not a Culture-based Education?”).
Prof. Lopez closed his lecture with a quotation that echoed with the audience: “It is said that to awaken to critical consciousness, it is not enough to grieve for what is wrong in the world, one needs to fall in love with what is right – to nourish and nurture it, to sacrifice and invest on it in order to be able to fight for it.”
i-Gov Talks is a good governance platform of the Institute for Labor Studies grounded in the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) Integrity Development Initiative, which supports the moral renewal agenda of the Philippine government through Administrative Order No. 255, s. 2009. Under DOLE’s Integrity Development Initiative, ethics training, spiritual formation, and moral recovery programs form part of the doable anti-corruption measures strategy.
The Institute for Labor Studies (ILS) is the policy research and advocacy arm of the Department of Labor and Employment. For more information on this story, please contact the Advocacy and Publications Division at 527-3490.