THE Philippine Association of Tertiary Level Educational Institutions in Environmental Protection and Management (PATLEPAM) Trainers’ Training targeting deans and senior faculty members of Higher Educational Institutions from Mindanao was held at the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) last October 20-21, 2011.
MSU-IIT being PATLEPAM’s Regional Coordinating Center for Northern Mindanao was chosen to host the two-day event that saw participants integrating specific topics on (1) Climate Change, (2) Climate Change Adaptation, and (3) Disaster Risks Reduction & Management into their own syllabi.
The integration of the CC, CCA, and DRRM topics in the syllabi came after a series of lectures/presentations given by a pool of experts and researchers (mostly from Mindanao), and the discussions and workshops that followed.
About 59 participants representing several universities and colleges from six regions in Mindanao attended the training with representatives from the Environmental Management Bureau of Regions IX, X, and XII.
The participants represented five selected areas of academic concerns known as CHAWF or the Coastal, Health, Agriculture, Water, and Forestry sectors.
The MSU-IIT Chancellor, Dr. Sukarno D. Tanggol, welcomed the participants during the opening program of the training. Dr. Olga M. Nuñeza, the Vice Chancellor for Research & Extension of MSU-IIT and the Training Coordinator introduced the training participants and gave the overview of the training.
The keynote address was delivered by the project component leader and adviser to the PATLEPAM Board of Directors, Dr. Roger Z. Guzman.
“This initiative is imperative in the face of increasing disasters that have been happening here in our country and in the global environment,” Guzman told the training participants.
The training was conducted under a very tight schedule with 11 lectures, three workshop sessions, presentation of the workshop output, integration and synthesis, and training evaluation and feedback, all packed into the two-day activity.
The PATLEPAM Mindanao Trainers’ Training is actually the implementation of the re-worked 3rd component of the PATLEPAM project, “Building Capacities for Climate Change Adaptation for Relevant Universities and Colleges and their Client Communities.”
Instead of directly targeting the local communities for climate change consciousness raising, PATLEPAM seeks to invest on educators under the theory — “More schools involved in terms of faculty trained, more communities to be benefited”.
PATLEPAM is working to have the participants of the Trainers’ Training echo what they learned about climate change, climate change adaptation, and disaster risk reduction & management when the time comes for them to roll out their extension projects into their respective clientele communities.
Topics : research climate change