Mabilog confident of youth support
Vice-Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, Liberal Party candidate for mayor, believes that the support of the young Ilonggos – students, out-of-school youth, youth organizations, fraternities and sororities – weighs heavily in his expected win in the May 10, 2010 election. The latest Random Access Consultants, Inc. (RACI) survey shows him ahead (47%) of closest rival Raul Gonzalez Sr. (23%).
“Even if most of the students are not old enough to vote,” Mabilog told this newspaper yesterday, “in a sense they are my most effective campaigners. They can influence their parents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.”
He added that his running mate for vice-mayor, Julienne “Jam” Baronda, still young and single, has always been the “voice of the youth” in the Sangguniang Panglungsod, where she has served as councilor in the past six years.
“The youth know,” Mabilog said, “that my own involvement with them had begun long before I joined politics.”
It began in 2003 when he founded the HALIGI Foundation and was elected president of the Makati Jaycees in Makati City. Egged on by his desire “to seek potential leaders” from among the young Ilonggos, he launched the “Ang Batang Lider” -- a search for outstanding student leaders of Iloilo City – which has since then evolved into an annual activity open to all graduating high-school student leaders, preferably presidents of student councils and heads of student organizations, of public and private schools in the city. Now on its 8th year, the project has conferred the “Ang Batang Lider” award to 95 achievement-oriented student leaders already.
When he became a member of the Sangguniang Panglunsod in 2004, Jed kicked off with his “My First Notebook” project to signal his priority commitment – education for all Ilonggos. With his personal funds, he bought notebooks and distributed them to all grade-one pupils of Iloilo City.
In 2005, obsessed with the determination to help poor but deserving students pursue their dream of a better life, then councilor Mabilog introduced high school and college scholarship programs that would free destitute parents from worrying about their children’s school fees. More than 500 students have availed themselves of the program.
In 2008, Vice-Mayor Mabilog likewise lured the out-of-school youth – including jeepney drivers, vendors, pedicab drivers, etc. – into taking up such computer courses as Computer Fundamentals, Digital Media Fundamentals, Web Design, Word Processing and Web Design, among others, which he had made available via his Community Technology Advancement Project, made possible in collaboration with Microsoft Philippines and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE). The project has produced 1,515 graduates already.
“Some of these graduates,” Jed enthused, “now enjoy better-paying jobs. Gone were the days when they were wondering whether they could move out of the poverty cycle that had been their parents’ misfortune.”
If elected mayor, he vows to put up a city-subsidized public college. The public clamor for a City College of Iloilo (CCI) is aimed at ending the accumulation of undergraduates who end up jobless just because they lack tertiary education. The feasibility of such a school is no problem, considering that Iloilo City collects the highest Special Education Fund (SEF) tax in the region.
“I don’t want more street children added to those already out begging on the streets,” Mabilog said.
Statistics at the National Statistics Office (NSO) show that, nationwide, of the 100 who enroll in grade one, only four eventually earn a college degree; that higher education being unavailable for free to the poor, the graduates of professional courses have gone down by 50% from a peak of 700,000 to 350,000 per year.
