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1. Tell me about yourself ... and I have to ask, were you born on a Tuesday?
I'm a freelance writer, and I have been running another web blog that has something to do with non-profits too. I am based in Spain and running SaveGuimaras web blog from here. Yes, I was born on a Tuesday but it isn´t a common name in the Philippines at all. However, I did met a Tuesday once in school and it was pretty surreal to meet someone else with the same name as yours. I also met a Wednesday.
2. Tell me the story of how and why your Save Guimaras got started.
I was getting sick of living in a very big city like Manila and decided to move to Iloilo City (Panay region, Visayas) for a few months in the 90s and Guimaras was just a short distance from there. I usually visited Guimaras with a friend when I had the time so I think it was the affinity for the place and Panay region which I consider my second home which gave me the inspiration to start the blog. This blog is a collaborative effort as much as possible. It stands for an entity/cause which is SaveGuimaras.
The goals of SaveGuimaras is to raise international awareness and mobilize groups to get involved. The Philippine media and some other bloggers are vigorously following the Guimaras tragedy (the Petron oil Spill should be a more appropriate name) but we lack international coverage. The more I keep this blog, the more I understand and believe that there is a double standard on oil spills. The success of the French citizens against Total Fina (Erika oil spill) was partly because of their local media and international media. Their media urged the people to boycott/protest against their government and total Fina. In the end both the french courts and total fina had to succumb to this public pressure.
Unfortunately, in the developing world it is a different scenario. The justice system in the Philippines is very subjective. And to add to that, the Filipinos used to be more active in voicing out their opinions but because of frustration in failed "people power" revolutions and people have to think of their survival first, there is a difficulty in engaging them for more positive action.
Petron the oil company has taken responsibility for the oil spill but failed to mention how much responsibility they are talking about. It is also a goal of our blog to provide legal research materials on what has happened in past oil spills to urge people/individuals/organization to take the right legal action on this matter. The problem is most people in the Philippines think the 300 million dollar compensation fund by the IOPC is enough to compensate the victims. Contrary to this, 300 million is very small because aside from the victims, they have to siphon out the remaining bunker fuel from the tanker that is still lying deep down the ocean which is reportedly going to cost 12 million. Who´s going to pay for that?
3. How has your blog connected you with people to help with your cause?
Through this blog we´ve met so many wonderful people who all have the passion and the drive to help the victims of Guimaras. Some have their own projects already in place before they´ve contacted us but we´ve also managed to link people with the same agenda and get them to collaborate with each other. Some organizations have also written expressing their willingness to collaborate with SaveGuimaras and its partners.
For example, Chromatic Experiment, a Filipino band contacted us thru our blog. They are willing to play for free for future rock gigs planned by the team of Joseph, Sazi and Laura (There are more people involved behind this team, but for the sake of brevity we will only mention these three).Since this is the first time the Philippines experienced an oil spill of this magnitude, we are also compelled to post some news items/research to help journalists who have no resources nor time to make research. News items and research on past oil spills posted in this blog are for the purpose of urging people/individuals to take the right kind of legal action to make sure the victims of Guimaras get what they deserve. Our main goal is still to raise international awareness and encourage grassroots participation
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