THE ATENEO Task Force (ATF) 2016 has chosen to partner up with Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan (SLB) and the Council of Organizations of the Ateneo (COA) to prepare for the upcoming national elections in 2016.
ATF is the Ateneo’s official student group responsible for synchronizing efforts in line with the national elections.
SLB is the socio-political arm of the Philippine Jesuits, and COA is the confederation of accredited organizations in the Ateneo.
ATF Head Mawe Duque said that through the partnership, ATF hopes to build on organizations’ individual core competencies for university-wide active political participation for the national elections.
“We hope to accomplish with these partnerships with COA and SLB, a mindset that mobilizing not only the Ateneo community, but the whole country, involves a lot of people with different talents and advocacies,” Duque said.
United for elections
During the BluePrint strategic planning session held by ATF on May 9 in the Juan C. Tan Conference Room, representatives of the different organizations gathered to discuss projects to collaborate on for the national elections.
According to Duque, coordinating with COA would provide avenues for organizations to incorporate political awareness in their advocacies.
“We want to create collaborative spaces where orgs can see how their core competencies can be mobilized to facilitate political participation [in the] 2016 national elections,” Duque said.
Duque added that the Media Arts Cluster will be suggesting communication strategies to ATF, the Management Information Systems Association will be developing an ATF website, and the Ateneo Statistics Circle will be providing a voter percentage coverage.
COA President Yesu Hernandez said that ATF is one of the avenues where organizations can “maximize their core competencies for positive social impact.”
“Or as I would always say, building a better Philippines, one org activity at a time, one org member at a time,” he added.
Kwentuhang Bayan
On June 20, ATF held an expectation-setting meeting with SLB’s Advocacy of Good Governance Program Officer Karlo Abadines and with organizations of the Ateneo, such as those of the Sector-Based Cluster that have partner communities.
The meeting covered the involvement of the partner communities as beneficiaries to SLB’s main political project, Kwentuhang Bayan.
In an interview with The GUIDON, Abadines stated that the project aims to address the issues of voter disenfranchisement, personality-based politics, lack of social accountability, and lack of protection of rights of vulnerable sectors.
“This opportunity to partner with [SLB] is guided with our formation to move beyond the school campus and [to explore] how we can involve different sectors, marginalized or not, this national elections,” Duque said.
In Kwentuhang Bayan, volunteers of the project shall facilitate discussions among locals of each community to discuss the issues they face in their localities.
After the sessions, the facilitators will guide the locals in creating an “election manifesto” that will contain policy details that the community wants the elected officials to implement, according to Kwentuhang Bayan’s Executive Summary, a document detailing the inner-workings of the program.
ATF invited the accredited organizations of the Ateneo to join the program by contributing facilitators to conduct Kwentuhang Bayan in their respective partner communities.
Satellite registration
This year, ATF aims to have all eligible voters of the student body registered before the deadline on October 31.
In cooperation with the Philippine Commission of Elections (COMELEC), a Satellite Registration (SatReg) Center will be set up in the Ateneo, tentatively in Escaler Hall, for all eligible students to register to vote and to have their biometrics taken.
The COMELEC is the principal government agency tasked to establish and enforce laws and regulations with regards to regular and special elections.
ATF’s efforts to disseminate information of registration qualifications, sites, and procedures are executed through their online media portals, namely their official Facebook page, Twitter account, and official website ateneotaskforce.com, which will be launched on August 18 of this year.
ATF is also coordinating with COMELEC to open SatReg to residents of districts three and four in Quezon City.
Moreover, ATF has approached the Ateneo administrative offices to “provide statistics of eligible ADMU units” to assure that they can reach COMELEC’s quota for registrants, as well as to assist ATF with logistical preparations such as venues and equipment for satellite registration, according to ATF’s Phase 1 Head Anton Miranda.
An effort for the nation
In order to engage Ateneans and to reach a bigger audience in a collective discourse in the matter of elections, ATF’s Communications Team used social media as their primary medium of communicating their initiatives to the public.
Recently, ATF launched the online campaign #OneBigVote on their official Facebook and Twitter account, asking Ateneans to answer the question, “What is your #OneBigVote for?”
According to ATF’s Communications Head Lyka Aguilar, the online campaign was well-received, with the campaign even reaching the other Ateneo schools in Cagayan De Oro, Davao, and Zamboanga.
The campaign shall continue with a set of different questions to capture and sustain the interest of a wide audience of concerned citizens not limited to Ateneans, and to keep these conversations on the national elections going throughout the year.
ATF is also partnering with other organizations outside the Ateneo, including several from the University of the Philippines, Miriam College, the National Youth Commission, and others that are mobilizing efforts for the national elections in 2016.
