Routes
Congruous concepts
It was the third and final day of the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), (German Development Organization) GTZ and Metropolitan lloilo Development Council (MIDC) seminar-workshop on enterprise development. I was hurrying up on an abstract with the deadline that August 15, 2006. Manong Ben Jimena chanced to ask me what other thing I was dong. I said I was dong a concept on the Dinagyang and the Millenium Development Goals (MDG). He said he was also working on an almost exactly similar concept.
With my co-author Victor Prodigo, I was to submit a paper for the 2007 University of California, Riverside conference "Religious Festivals In Contemporary Southeast Asia".
On September 4, 2006, I got a letter telling me that our paper was accepted for the conference. It was signed by Dr. Patrick Alcedo and Dr Hendrik Maier of the Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages.
I was doubly glad when I knew that Manong Ben Jimena’s own paper got a big recognition from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The concept was not about Manong Ben, Victor, and I. It was about Dinagyang and the development of lloilo City.
THE DINAGYANG: A FORUM TOWARDS THE MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
(Abstract)
Dinagyang (Hiligaynon term for revelry) considered the most unusual of Ilonggo worships, is an annual Festival of Iloilo City, Western Visayas, Philippines dramatizing offerings and prayers and showcasing choreographed and random drum music and street dance for the Señor Santo Niño (Holy Child Jesus).
Traced back to the devotion to the original image of Señor Sto. Niño, one of the two oldest and most historical relics (The other one is the cross of Magellan.) of the Philippines today given as a gift to Queen Juana, wife of King Humabon of Cebu, after she submitted herself to Christian civilization on the discovery of the Philippines Archipelago in 1521, the Dinagyang has now evolved into an annual socio-cultural-religious festival led by the Roman Catholic Church of San Jose under the Archdiocese of Jaro, the Local Government Unit (LGU) of Iloilo City, the Private Sector (PS) embodied in the Dinagyang Foundation, the National Government Line Agencies, the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), People’s Organizations (POs), making a strong positive impact on the local (Iloilo City and Iloilo Province), regional (Western Visayas) and national (Philippines) revenues.
With its components of religion, sociology, culture and politics in its recent theme of political unification, the festival has attracted international dignitaries to primarily note as one the United States Ambassador and Consular Officers.
This paper aims to make the Dinagyang Festival a forum for issues on economy and environment and global development as embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to meet the needs of the world's poorest people by building human resource and infrastructural capacity – with assistance from richer countries and the international community – in science, in healthcare, in engineering and industrial production, in energy production and distribution and many other fields.