By Maria Monica L Borja

Third-year Development Communication students of Xavier University have officially opened their social marketing exhibit on raising awareness in disaster preparedness dubbed “Andam Kagay-an” (Ready Cagayan de Oro City) on Monday, October 3 at the event center of Lim Ket Kai Mall.

Andam Kagay-an, frontlined by junior DevCom students taking up DC 28 (Communication Strategies in Development) subject this semester, is an offshoot of the eighth and last installment of the Syagit (Shout) social marketing outputs exhibit. 

This year, in support of the Cagayan de Oro City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO), DevCom juniors produced multimedia "Information, Education, Communication" (IEC) materials such as infographics, posters, fans, flyers, stickers, audio plugs, and video presentations promoting the significance of disaster preparedness. These materials came about after their community engagements in disaster-prone areas in the city: barangays 10, 13, 17, Puntod, Consolacion, Bonbon, Macasandig, Nazareth, Kauswagan, Carmen, and Macabalan, among others.

DevCom Professor Dr Ma Theresa Rivera shared four goals of the social marketing exhibit, namely, to showcase students’ works, to create an environment of readiness, to bring development at the core of the community, and to give students an opportunity to learn.

“The social marketing campaign exhibit aims to showcase third-year DevCom students’ works composed of research and applied communication planning using social marketing as a strategy to a certain cause or development,” said Rivera.

“It also targets to develop an environment of readiness among Kagay-anons, to educate the people, and bring up their consciousness towards preparedness. It aspires to make people understand what it means to be prepared for a disaster,” she added.

For this academic year, the DevCom department has adopted the 17 global goals of the United Nations in its theme, “Transforming our World through Communication for Development.

“Andam Kagay-an aims to feature the DevCom department’s work as to how it fits into the development challenges in the city and how we in the academe could help bring development to the core and produce information materials that are meaningful and could resonate to the people’s needs,” said Rivera.

The campaign also serves as an opportunity for the students to learn how to put up public displays, manage events, and learn how to make good use of the resources for public’s information.

“We have chosen disaster preparedness as the central theme of our campaign because it is one of the menacing development challenges in CDO that we have had through the years based on scientific evidence. We would like to heighten people’s awareness and change their attitude and practices to adapt to the ‘new normal,’” explained Rivera.

CDRMMO will demonstrate various emergency responses and present their disaster risk reduction and management plan as part of the three-day exhibit, which will run until Wednesday, October 5. ∎