A FEW days before the elections and still unaware of your candidates’ platforms, your precinct number, or how you’ll vote using the automated election system?
Gabay Halalan aims to answer these and other election-related queries through tele-educators who will “provide free, accessible, relevant, and unbiased information about the elections.”
This service has been running from April 15 and will end on May 15. The Gabay Halalan center can be found at CTC 313.
Credible and unbiased
Gabay Halalan was formed by the Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB), the social apostolate of the Society of Jesus, and Life Academy, a non-government organization which aims to form the youth to make significant contributions to society.
Shift Manager Bro. Jereme Asunto, SJ said that Gabay Halalan was formed to address our country’s problem of having disenfranchised voters. “[These are voters who] lack information…on the elections…on who is running and the profiles of the candidates themselves.”
Asunto added that there is a lot of information about the elections that it’s so hard to distinguish which sources are the credible ones. Their operations aim to solve this issue by providing the callers researched and verified information.
Gabay Halalan has been actively rendering service since the 2004 and 2007 elections.
Change in self, for country
The Gabay Halalan team is composed of volunteers—students, professionals, and even parents. The service accepts online registrants and walk-ins for those interested in joining. Alessandra Vilches, a recent graduate, initially volunteered because she wasn’t doing anything during the summer.
“But after my first day at Gabay Halalan, I realized that [volunteering] was my own little way of proactively engaging in … change,” she said.
Meanwhile, sophomore Julian Elizar Torcuator volunteered so that he can start change in himself, in order to influence change in others. “[To] volunteer for Gabay Halalan … is a great leap to start … change-making, because to volunteer means to give your time, your efforts, with utmost sincerity, without expecting anything in return,” he said.
The volunteers can either be tele-educators, researchers, or documentors.
Tele-educators usually make outbound calls to people listed in the telephone directory, promoting the service’s hotlines. They also receive inbound calls, which are usually from people who are asking for their precincts, the step-by-step process of the automated elections, or information about candidates.
The documentors take statistics while researchers look for information that the service currently doesn’t have in its database.
Aside from giving election-related information, Asunto said that Gabay Halalan is meant to educate the Filipinos. “We want to educate everyone that the election isn’t just for voting, that there’s more to casting your vote. We give them information about their rights as citizens of this country, that it is our right to vote.”
As of April 29, Gabay Halalan has 292 volunteers and has received a total of 5,412 calls.
