fixing up

Reviewing our calendar of activities, our primary objectives for the month of June are getting the legal stuff down (the papers are in the grind, but the mill moves just so), and moving into the office (basically to make client servicing easier--we can coordinate more easily instead of our previous virtual setup). With Blue Three away, and Red One submerged in her work at Children's Hour, Pink Five, Green Two and Yellow Four set up shop.

If Pink Five has his pink chair, then Green Two has her stylish light-olive one (with the table courtesy of Ate Tweet Sering). That's the spruced-up Winston sitting pretty on Dang's workstation.

And Yellow Four painted the table donated by Red One...yellow. Green Two gave the little rattan table donated by Gay Iglesias a little coat of white.

Pink Five and Green Two in an office full of stuff (er well, almost full)! Many, many thanks to Gay Iglesias, whose office we cleaned out yesterday. She recently moved to Thailand to do some great work for the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center. Thanks to Red One, we had manongs Orlan, Edward and Bert of Gem Signs around to help us move Gay's things.

In lieu of a whiteboard, the Idea!ists have clear acrylic sheets attached to one of our walls (specifically, one of the walls of the kitchen area--so that we can eat while we meet, hehe).

Pink Five hams up a fear or heights while installing a flying-toy-contraption to the ceiling. Behind him above the acrylic boards is a collage of postcards we put together. Farther still behind is the gray cabinet Gay donated which houses all of our precious books and resource materials.

Once we get our net connection up, it is predicted that no one will leave the office. Harhar.

in the absence of statutory benefits

In the absence of statutory benefits (while we still get HR, admin and the manual of operations done), it shall be mandated that all Idea!ists take 1000 mg of Vitamin C every day in view of the less-than-ideal weather (though according to a source, ducks are delighted with our rainy season). Lemme go grab a bottle of ascorbic acid at Mercury.

Love with sniffles,
Yellow Four
PS: Bawal magkasakit. Tsk, tsk.

*splash*

Construction ongoing for the Idea!s website.

the point of no return

Incorporation papers are in. Here we go.

of appearances

Amidst the men and women in dark suits at the buffet breakfast line this morning, was an older gentleman, modestly dressed, in comparison to the other delegates. Wearing rubber shoes, pants and a faded collared shirt, he came in with my boss' boss. When we were introduced, he laughingly reminisced that the last time he was at ADB headquarters was in 1980, "you probably weren't even born," he said. I smiled. He was right.

I wondered about his attire, and the fact that he wasn't as formally dressed as the other delegates. For one who was dressed in the clothes she slept in (sshhh), it didn't really matter to me. I just found it amusing, coming from a university whose best professors came to class in slippers. Turns out the incognito dude of the day was TL Sankar, energy guru and headmaster to some of India's best and brightest.

Some people transcend image. Don't you just love it when you meet distinguished, wonderfully low-profile people (the delightful aberrations to the norm of powerdressing)?

*****

The coverboy for Clean Energy. Glenn David in silhouette!

The host of the Idea!s planning session in Batangas gamely posed for the camera, and lent his silhouette to the cause of clean energy. Thank you, thank you Glenn! The above image was used as the cover for a couple of the discussion draft reports for ADB's Clean Energy Week. Silhouette image photographed by Dan Matutina and enhanced by Bernice de Leon.

thinking

It's dangerous, I know. Wahaha. Been giving online publishing a lot of thought lately. After the meeting with the Philippine Federation of the Deaf and the Philippine Deaf Resource Center, I've been thinking about NGOs' lack of resources to publish. The norm is to publish research and data on hardcopy. The thing is, there are oftentimes problems regarding distribution and access. Not to mention the higher production cost of hardcopies. I was thinking of online publishing as a faster and more cost-effective way of getting what you need to say out there. It's always easier to find information online, just ask any college student doing research. Hardcopies may still be produced, but when time is of the essence, online publishing and distributing copies of data on CDs in my opinion, is the best way to go.

Found a bit of research supporting this:

Online or Invisible?
This article refers more to scientific data and journals.

OPA Press Release
This article is a release on how the web rivals television as a form of media, and works as an extension of all other types of media. Thing is, all this information is from the US. Well, we can always pick up something from here. Still, it would be great if we had information of this sort available regionally.

And some helpful links:
Desktop Publishing Info

Cooking up an evil plan. Stay tuned.

before and ongoing

This is the drab before shot.

This is the ongoing shot, as we're still in the process of putting our stuff together. Note the mental-asylum-white walls. Quite appropriate that the Philippine Mental Health Association is just next door.

This is Teacher Gladys who helped carry Winston (Yelle's PC) to the 4th floor.

And this is how we work. Hahaha. We still haven't gotten our chairs yet. Still scoping nice, colorful, mismatched ones. A kindly neighbor loaned Pink Five a chair, so he wouldn't have to sit on the floor while working. A friendly welcome gesture.

we work hard for the money. and for clean energy.

Been here since last night. Boy will a lot of people be glad when Clean Energy Week is over.

they had my vote.

speaking silently, they were heard

This afternoon Dang and I met with Noemi, Charlie and Giselle, all administrators from the School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (SDEAS) at the DLS-College of St. Benilde. We encountered their organization while scoping projects at the Panibagong Paraan project exhibition a couple of weeks ago at SM Megamall. We discussed possible partnerships between Idea!s and their institution, seeing as we may be able to collaborate with some of their MultiMedia Arts students and graduates on design projects. This meeting was rather timely, as tomorrow we have a presentation with the Philippine Federation for the Deaf and the Philippine Deaf Resource Center. They have a couple of projects which we might be working on. Wouldn't it be cool if a student from SDEAS worked with us on these materials for the Deaf? Come September, if things go well, we'll have an SDEAS intern. Exciting.

I've posted an article from the DLS-CSB paper on the SDEAS' recent achievement. This is great stuff.

SDEAS Triumphs at Panibagong Paraan Competition

The School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (SDEAS) does it again.

Its entry, "Youth Entre-ployment Support for the Deaf," was chosen as one of the top winners at the recently concluded 2006 Panibagong Paraan competition. Panibagong Paraan is a prestigious project grant competition organized by World Bank, in collaboration with local and international development partners. The project proposal will be implemented within a one-year period using PhP 1 million grant from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) - Philippines-Australia Community Assistance Program (PACAP). "We ar truly grateful for this grant, as this will go a long way towards fulfilling our goal of improving career opportunities for the Deaf through employment and entrepreneurship," remarked SDEAS Dean Theresa Christine Benitez-dela Torre.

This victory comes at the heels of another SDEAS success: last year, a group of Deaf Benildeans won in the Youth Employment Spark Business Plan Competition, a national contest that resulted in the creation of the Deaf Benildean Multi-Purpose Cooperative (DBMC). The Deck Coffee franchise in the College's Taft campus is DBMC's first business venture.

The "Youth Entre-ployment Support for the Deaf" project proposal is a joint effort of SDEAS, DBMC and the Philippine Resources for Sustainable Development (PRSD). It aims to empower DLS-CSB's Deaf students and graduates to become micro-entrepreneurs, enabling them to conceptualize, lan and implement their own businesses under the coooperative set-up. Consequently, these efforts shall generate more opportunities for sustainable income and employment among Deaf people, enabling them to become job makers, and not just job seekers.

The SDEAS entry also earned a People's Choice award for best project proposal during Panibagong Paraan's two-day exhibit at the Megatrade Hall in SM Megamall. This special award came with two prizes: a digital camera and cellular phone, gadgets that are vital to Deaf people.

The participation of SDEAS in this year's Panibagong Paraan contest was made possible by the support of Postsecondary Education Network-International (PEN-International), a partnership of colleges and universities serving the postsecondary education needs of deaf and hard-of-hearing students worldwide.

- Taken from the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde Perspective June 13, 2006

the poster boy of philippine social enterprise

Someone's been at it, and he's been doing one heckuva job. Social Enterprise may be a rather new concept in the country, but it has no less than Illac Diaz as its trailblazer. Awarded as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men for social entrepreneurship last December, and a 2005-2006 MIT Humphrey Fellow, Diaz has founded organizations such as the My Shelter Foundation (they build classrooms through earthbag technology), and Pier One (a dormitory for migrant sea laborers).

Links to some of his projects:
Full Belly Project
My Shelter
Feature in the Sunday PhilStar Mag

as fate would have it

The Idea!ists: seated on the floor is Dan a.k.a. Pink Five; standing (L-R) Rhea a.k.a. Red One, Berns a.k.a. Blue Three, Dang a.k.a. Green Two and Yelle a.k.a. Yellow Four

How interesting. I started this blog in September of last year. I also invited as team members of this blog, a few friends with whom I shared some crazy dreams as well as bits and pieces of quarterlife angst. I figured it would be nice to have some forum to exchange hopes and dreams and to help each other out with advice and encouragement. For some reason though, they never got my invitations, and this blog never really took off.

But now we're all in the same project together--one of the crazy dreams is coming to reality. With quite a bit of hard work-- tears, white hairs popping out, zits erupting and us crazy kids randomly jumping off cliffs, we've managed to survive working collectively via the virtual world and over meetings at starbucks (with the free wifi). Soon, thanks to the masterful painting skills of Dang and Dan, we'll be able to move into the Idea!s office this week! We should also be picking up the office furniture Gay left us before she moved to Thailand this week as well. I just can't wait to move all the resource material and doodads I've collected to the office. Dan's also prepared a layout! We're scheduled for a mini-windfall in a couple of weeks for some of the projects we've been doing for a certain big development organization in Ortigas. When that comes, it'll be time for a new monster machine.

I'm so excited. Once we're all settled, things will really fly.

It's amazing though how things fall into place, how things seemingly unfold as they have these past few months.

Rhea's off to a planning this week for Children's Hour, and Berns' is off to Greece! For the meantime, Dan, Dang and I will hold fort--we've got a couple of meetings with some organizations next week. Coincidentally, they're both organizations whose activities deal with the deaf. Wish us luck.