Aiming to increase the coverage of environmental stories in newspapers, a local workshop was held for 15 young writers on environmental reporting from Aug. 18 to 20 at Silliman University.
Camp SEWI (short for Student’s Environmental Writing Initiative) featured local and international environmental journalists, publishers, authors, scientists, and movers, said Val Amiel Vestil, founder and lead initiator.
Vestil said the concept of the camp name is inspired from the hugot of every broken hearted Filipino.
“Climate change is happening and we all know that the Philippines is a very vulnerable country. That, in fact, should break everyone’s hearts so we need to able to increase the conversation on the environment, “ he added, “That is my hugot.”
Hugot (to draw or to pull) or hugot lines connote deep emotional or sentimental undertones of a person, and is just now popularly used in social media.
The camp is designed to develop skill sets in effective environmental writing through sessions engaging learning sessions, hands-on activities, “enviro-ice breakers”, and practical fieldwork.
The workshop culminated in an oath-taking ceremony for environmental writing.
Vestil received a mini-grant for this community project through his fellowship for civic engagement at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA for the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Spring Academic Fellowship program. (Judy Flores Partlow)
