My experience as a media team member for the Manila GIN Conference 2014 began early on Friday morning. We landed in Manila excited and ready to start the activities. We settled into the hotel before heading off for ISM.
I was very surprised to find out that most of the conference was run by students. We were escorted into the “Little Theater”, where our first activities would be held.
After a short introduction into what we were going to do, we started the first icebreaking activities such as “two truths and a lie”. Then, we were divided into different table groups and played a very exciting and interesting game called “the NGO game”. This creative game simulates the actions of NGOs in a natural disaster situation. It really helped recreate the nervous and stressful situations that NGOs go through in these hard situations. We were then sent to attend GANG discussions. As the Media Team, we had a lot of time to ask every facilitator questions about the background of the conference, which gave us a lot on ideas on how we can base a conference on the Compass model.
We concluded the day with a short debrief before we were sent back to the hotel.
On Saturday morning, we were up for an early start once more and after a quick but filling breakfast, we were off for our service component. I headed for the Philippines Community Foundation, better known as PCF, where our focus was Natural Disaster Prevention. This topic came from the GANG discussion in which every group was divided into four different Global Issues. In PCF, we learned about how children live in the dumps in the outskirts of Manila. PCF takes these children to give them opportunities, such as getting jobs of their own and breaking the chain of food-seekers in the dump. PCF uses a very successful system called “Food for School”, which operates in a way that motivates students to come to school by rewarding them with food so that the parents will encourage the students to attend school. This was a very motivational experience that has brought me to think about starting a GC back in Singapore
After this amazing experience, it would be impossible for me not to take anything back to Singapore. First and foremost, I will take back the knowledge of the compass model. This was our main goal, so I think that we have definitely achieved it. We will take all this knowledge back to Singapore so that we can organize the best conference in October for Round Square. I was very struck by the PCF group, and I think that we would be able to open a new GC in our school to keep the connection with the Philippines as our first GC in the country.
- Filippo M.
I was very surprised to find out that most of the conference was run by students. We were escorted into the “Little Theater”, where our first activities would be held.
After a short introduction into what we were going to do, we started the first icebreaking activities such as “two truths and a lie”. Then, we were divided into different table groups and played a very exciting and interesting game called “the NGO game”. This creative game simulates the actions of NGOs in a natural disaster situation. It really helped recreate the nervous and stressful situations that NGOs go through in these hard situations. We were then sent to attend GANG discussions. As the Media Team, we had a lot of time to ask every facilitator questions about the background of the conference, which gave us a lot on ideas on how we can base a conference on the Compass model.
We concluded the day with a short debrief before we were sent back to the hotel.
On Saturday morning, we were up for an early start once more and after a quick but filling breakfast, we were off for our service component. I headed for the Philippines Community Foundation, better known as PCF, where our focus was Natural Disaster Prevention. This topic came from the GANG discussion in which every group was divided into four different Global Issues. In PCF, we learned about how children live in the dumps in the outskirts of Manila. PCF takes these children to give them opportunities, such as getting jobs of their own and breaking the chain of food-seekers in the dump. PCF uses a very successful system called “Food for School”, which operates in a way that motivates students to come to school by rewarding them with food so that the parents will encourage the students to attend school. This was a very motivational experience that has brought me to think about starting a GC back in Singapore
After this amazing experience, it would be impossible for me not to take anything back to Singapore. First and foremost, I will take back the knowledge of the compass model. This was our main goal, so I think that we have definitely achieved it. We will take all this knowledge back to Singapore so that we can organize the best conference in October for Round Square. I was very struck by the PCF group, and I think that we would be able to open a new GC in our school to keep the connection with the Philippines as our first GC in the country.
- Filippo M.