With the amihan season comes cool winds and the tantalizing promise of the holiday season. But for us at Rappler, this time of the year beckons something else, the election season that starts in January. New year, new chance to rethink our leaders and decide whose names we’ll mark on the ballot.
It’s crunch time for Rappler’s civic engagement arm as we strive to fulfill our promise of amplifying community issues and concerns during elections.
Last November 19 to 20, we held the first leg of our #AmbagNatin voter empowerment roadshow in the province of Iloilo — in Iloilo City and Miagao. Over a hundred people attended our public forum at the Little Theater at University of the Philippines Visayas in Iloilo City, where local journalists, academe, and civil society groups talked about the importance of credible information sources during elections. The role that generative AI will play in elections, political narratives, propaganda, and disinformation was a key discussion point too.
You can see some of the insights of attendees in the voter hotline chat room in the Rappler Communities app, where we asked them to weigh in during the event.
The public talks were followed by a series of intense workshops led by Rappler reporters, civic engagement specialists, and senior video producers for Iloilo volunteers interested in being our newsroom’s connection to their communities. We call them Movers.
Movers are Rappler volunteers who help us cover community issues better and who we mobilize for campaigns and advocacies they think are relevant to their localities. Movers have been an integral part of Rappler since our founding in 2012. But like many initiatives, it was among those we had to wind down during the Duterte years because of a lack of support and the general hostility to journalism at the time.
But we’re reviving the Mover program because, now more than ever, journalism needs a lifeline. And what better way to keep it alive than help cultivate that love of journalism in others? The Mover program allows us to do this, training citizens to weave compelling stories about their community and allowing them to work alongside our journalists and editors. Many of our Rappler staff used to be Movers. I’d like to take that as a sign that the program works.
And what compelling stories our Movers pitched! One wants to explore the psyche of Ilonggo families who sell their votes. Another wishes to do a profile of the Garin dynasty and their impact on the province. While Manileños may envy Iloilo City for its sidewalks, riverside jogging lanes, and infrastructure, one Mover wants to spotlight the growing transportation woes not apparent to short-time visitors.
These trainee Movers were able to get feedback from Rappler political reporter Dwight de Leon, and got video storytelling tips from our senior video producer JC Gotinga.
When our team went to Miagao for a program specific to high school students in the town, we were amazed by the issues reported by the budding journalists there. Around 40 high school student journalists spoke about a diversity of topics — from the lack of an evacuation center in their barangay, to politicized aid, to classroom shortage.
The youngest of the group, 12-year-old Amiel, showed photos of a makeshift wooden bridge barely spanning a raging brown river which he has to cross every day to get to school. Another group even drew a map of their campus, using crayons and paint, to show the difficult route they must take to transfer classrooms because of the lack of space in their school.
Being able to hear directly from such young budding journalists was made possible by our partner, Zoilo Andrada Jr., PhD, who we fondly call Doc Zoi. He’s a faculty member at UP Visayas’ Division of Humanities, under the College of Arts and Sciences.
After our roadshow, inspired by the story ideas we gathered, we relayed them to the editorial team, hoping to bridge our reporters and editors with the Movers to make their stories come alive and reach bigger audiences.
We have two more stops for the #AmbagNatin roadshow — Lipa City, in Batangas, from November 28 to 29, and Iligan City from December 8 to 9. Hope to see you there if you’re in the area! – Rappler.com
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