Text by Kent A Ugalde, with reports by Stephen J Pedroza | Photos by Samboy Lim and Jose Olegario Uy

Talents from the Development Communication community of Xavier University were showcased at the three-day exhibit called Syagit.
The 4th year DevCom students presented various communication materials such as newsletters, videos, comics and brochures, among others, during the Syagit 2015: Sampit sa dapit, i-Syagit! on March 10-12.

Syagit is an annual exhibit culminating the activities of the two major fields of DevCom: Educational Communication (EduCom) and Development Journalism (DevJourn).

“[Syagit is coined as it is] because these are campaigns to the communities—meaning, we are calling out to the communities; making them move into action,” said Ray Anthony Lao, a DevCom instructor.

This event at the Lim Ket Kai Center drew together students, faculty members, community leaders and other guests to witness and commend the outputs from the three classes: DC97 - Production and Evaluation of Educational Communication Media, DC87 - Management and Production of Community Newspaper, and DC14 - Communication Strategies.

This year’s theme centers on social efforts and advocacies focusing on the environmental protection and food security for different barangays of Cagayan de Oro City namely, Balulang, Carmen, Macasandig, Consolacion, Burgos Street, Macabalan and Barangay 17.

“Right now, we cannot notice food accessibility problem because this has been overshadowed by other problems. Thus, food security is one of the solutions—meaning, they provide their own food making themselves feel more independent in terms of acquisition of their resources,” Lao shared.

Lao added that environmental protection is a reaction of the people to the fact that calamities now do not choose which cities and places in Philippines to hit.

Partnership with VEST

Syagit 2015 also featured the region-wide environmental campaign of XU dubbed as “Valuing Ecosystem Services Together” (VEST), which highlights people’s participation and a paradigm shift to prevent another catastrophe from inflicting Northern Mindanao.

VEST is a social marketing arm of the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) project of XU through the McKeough Marine Center (MMC), Research and Social Outreach (RSO) and Xavier Science Foundation (XSF) as the fund manager.

In Northern Mindanao, the project has been piloted within the ancestral domain of the Miarayon-Lapok-Lirongan-Tinaytayan Tribal Association (MILALITTRA), one of the 12 lumad communities in the protected area of Talakag, Bukidnon where Mt Kalatungan stands. The 5-year community development master plan of MILALITTRA aims to reforest 832 hectares, while 816 hectares will be allotted for agroforestry.

Part of this green endeavor is to mainstream the principles of VEST through a slew of activities to encourage Kagay-anons to participate in the fund drive to reforest Mt Kalatungan and reward the efforts of the indigenous people community as the forest managers.

Syagit for the last three years centered on environmental issues and disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) themes so the organizers saw the partnership with VEST fitting for this year’s exhibit.   

Multimedia for the communities

The event kicked off with ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 10, Tuesday. On its second day, Syagit had an acoustic concert where Unseen Shadows, Food, Family and Future (F3) group, and Vote or Die Trying (VODT) performed.

Dulaang Atenista, XU’s resident theater company, also performed “No Probs, it’s Improvs” to entertain the audience. On the last day, live presentations of the students’ outputs and awarding of the groups were held.

For the DC87 class, DevJourn students exhibited 5 various publications which contained stories gathered from 5 different CDO barangays.

For the DC97 class, one of the EduCom students’ outputs exhibited was comics tackling about food security and urban farming.

For the DC14, the students exhibited posters related to potable water and adequate water supply, among others.

Ariana Cristelle L Pagdangan, one of the exhibitors, said that her experience in immersing with the community to putting together the stories for their group’s newsletter was “exhausting yet fulfilling.”

All the multimedia materials produced by the DevCom students were shared with the leaders and members of their respective community for their own information-dissemination activities.