AT LEAST a thousand people and at least a hundred more cultural workers would take the pledge this Friday October 16, as Maribojoc hosts this year’s cultural campaign, Stand Up and Take Action (SUTA) against poverty in line with the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals.
The pledge, which would also be taken by millions all over the world from October 16-18 would engage the people to press their leaders and countries to focus on the UN agreements stated in the MDGs.
In cooperation with the National commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) through the Lihok Bisaya movement, Maribojoc would be Bohol’s main hub of the intensive campaign of mobilizing people through the arts and culture to pursue the various MDGs.
With culture and the arts known for its power to unleash creativity and productivity, communicate development themes and contribute to over-all social transformation, the campaign here provides a model of harnessing the local heritage and the arts for upgrading the quality of life in disadvantaged communities, said Lihok Bisaya artistic director Lugardo Labad.
Lihok Bisaya is a 5-year program recently launched by the NCCA Visayan members as strategy to address the issues of Poverty and respond to the challenges of the MDGs through the creation of sustainable community-based creative industries, he explained.
Labad adds that artists and cultural workers from the Visayas, led by NCCA Committee members from Heritage, Arts, Traditional Communities and Cultural Dissemination facilitate the events envisioned as a multi-stakeholder strategy generating synergy among local communities, governance, business and the artists sectors in the creation of indigenous local products and services reflective of the MDGs.
Launched in seven sites in the Visayas in Antique, Capiz, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Cebu, Bohol, and Samar, events are simultaneously held in these locations, he shared.
In Maribojoc, the campaign to address poverty would be participated in by local cultural collectives of Maribojoc, Antequera, Cortes and Anda who shall perform their newly cooked performances detailing community life experiences in the new eco-cultural tourism circuit of Abatan and Anda.
Now a with a new eco-cultural tourism product in the river community tours, artists here helped the collectives come up with presentations complementing the eco-tour as venue for tourists to learn about the communities.
With the presentations, organizers hope to escalate greater awareness for the cause of eradicating poverty fast and joining the call for change and transformation. (PIA)