Cebu blogger becomes campaign ambassador for farmer heroes

by: Jaysee John Rosal Pingkian

Making it into one of the best leadership training in the country was not an easy task. The Young Minds Academy has exposed me to different issues Philippines has been facing and with the theme that revolves around Poverty Alleviation, we are expected to be Architects of Change as the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. molded us to be. The program has also introduced us to a lot of communities and immersing with the people along the way as we design our project proposals and social marketing tracks. To know more about our YMA Season 5 journey read my chronicles at my blog post about I Luv Farmers.

Gathering top student leaders from all over Cebu with ages that span two generations: high school and college, this program has definitely upscaled the worth our youth could do these days to take part in nation building. We are at the last quarter of our training and I am so proud of my team, Team CPMPC to have gone so far the journey, picking up different lessons, changing the way we look at the world, doing community involvement like never before and most especially discovering part of ourselves that we thought never existed.

My team is currently taking part in a wide scale of social marketing and fund raising efforts to promote a farmer empowerment program in Consolacion, Cebu. When I first learned about our assignment, I felt troubled as to how are we going to let people care so much about farmers unlike dealing with organizations in Cebu that addresses poverty in a social way such as child prostitution, trafficking or the like. But then as we convened time and time again after our series of input sessions and seminars, we have devised  a very elaborate scheme to promote our farmers and what better way to gather all the support we need than through making people realize the efforts they are doing. So out of the spirit of volunteerism, we offered more hours than was required from us to do the biggest project our team has made since making our project proposal.

Our social marketing aims to promote Kabalikat sa Kabuhayan program of the Municipality of Consolacion. It is a program that teaches farmers from all over Cebu the latest innovations in fruit and vegetable productions. Because of my work, I could not be there the whole day to be with them but instead entrusted the logistics and coverage to my other teammates while I do most of the legwork for online promotion and art direction.

Our campaign is entitled “iluvfarmers” to make people appreciate the unsung heroes in the mountains whose efforts have been keeping us alive and free from hunger all this time. So far our marketing efforts has totally paid off, we were able to gather supports on our third week:  564 page likes, 4176 post views, 240 people talking about it on Facebook; 16 retweets, 72 followers and 114 replies on Twitter, 167 pageviews on our blog and endorsements from leading student leaders in universities today, young professionals and online publishers.
There are a lot of things you can do for our farmers right now:
6 Steps to Help Them!

1. LIKE and SHARE this page!
2. DONATE your Facebook or Twitter Status:
• They work hard to provide us food. We can help them do better. LIKE #iluvfarmers on Facebookhttp://facebook.com/iluvfarmers
• Somewhere in the mountains are heroes who work tirelessly to provide us and their families. Support #iluvfarmers on Facebookhttp://facebook.com/iluvfarmers
• Facebook is not just for emo stuff. It could also be used to support our hero farmers! Support #iluvfarmershttp://facebook.com/iluvfarmers
3. Or you could CREATE YOUR CREATIVE STATUS and post it here so we could feature you!
4. FOLLOW us on Twitter http://twitter.com/iluvfarmers
5. DONATE or ask people to donate money, farm tools, farm supplies, seedlings or seeds.
• Contact iluvfarmers Campaign Ambassador Lorbe Catadman: 09299613737
6. PLAY THE MINI GAME by commenting on this photo:
   Why I Should luvFarmers?

Show some luv today!