How to Create a Vision for Educating – Honing in on Passion and Advocacy

Currently I am interning at the World Fellowship Center, a nonprofit where social justice meets nature in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. While I am here, I am embarking on a project to present on the Philippines and the current human rights crisis that extends to huge historical significance and so many intersecting global issues.

What I am currently figuring out how to do through being here and interning, is the challenge of creating awareness and additionally, making the education of awareness accessible and digestible. When in various college courses, I find that I find myself alienated from the subject matter due to the expanding lexicon of academia holding these issues within confines of organization and polishment. But not every issue can be polished and presented in a pretty box; pathologized and then approached in the same organized manner. The reality is that organizing is MESSY! Organizing is passionate, it is angry, it is reveling in so many emotions that sometimes what we are fighting for can be lost in the crossfires of avenues of solutions.

With that being said, I am not free of guilt of intellectualizing certain issues because the precedent of even doing so is the illusion of control. By pathologizing these various issues around the world, we can have a sense of control that yes, I know exactly what is going on because of x,y,z….. and here are ways to approach this! But the truth is that on the ground of these issues, the macro ceases to hold as much importance as the pervasive issue screams in the day to day lives and time holds a different relevance.

In this, I think that education leading to awareness and action still holds the most importance but what I am grappling with is how can I present on issues without creating a sense of distance and alienation?

Here is my understanding and of course, I am only learning but here is how I grapple with this issue. I’ll frame it within the issue that I am speaking about:

The Human Rights Crisis in the Philippines: Examining Colonial and Imperial Histories tied to the War on Drugs

So here is my title above, and with this I am setting the intention of my presentation. Not making the title too inaccessible is key in order to garner attention and interest in issues. With this, people can view the title and grasp a little bit of the subject matter without being immediately alienated, for example if I had made the title “From Colonialism and Imperialism to The War on Drugs : An Exploration on the Consequences of Influence, Urban Colonial Design and Organized Abandonment.” Like woah, that is a little too much, and most of the vocabulary used in that title requires prerequisite knowledge on theories of colonialism and imperialism as a whole (funnily enough that was a draft of my title, oops!). The importance of this is that we can definitely go into those theories or ideas, but overwhelming the targeted audience, in my case the general public, right away can turn away those that don’t feel like they can engage. I can’t tell you how many times when gathering references I was turned away from academic documents because the titles were daunting, and they probably were very important or filled with insight. It is just a reflex sometimes, and it doesn’t mean that I am not smart or not willing to learn about these issues, it just means that learning takes a certain bandwidth that sometimes gets depleted if not approached in the right way.

If you want to organize, get people to care about an issue and follow with action, you have to simplify. To keep the story simple, more people can grasp onto the issue and its up to them to delve into the deeper issue themselves. But as social justice advocates, in order to get people to care, your movement or presentation needs to be accessible.

So after choosing your subject matter, in my case it is the Philippines, what I find to be productive is setting an intention. I have my title, and the issues that I want to educate others on, now what is my intention in presenting this? How can I present without centering myself within the issue, and how can I present in a way that flows and creates a concise synthesization of topics without leaving out important areas?

My Intentions: Connecting History with the Present, Exposing Inequalities, Showing Globalization Consequences, Creating Awareness in the U.S. about the Philippines, How Philippines issues are U.S. issues too, How policies and laws in the Philippines are informed by American Policies, Parallel issues in the world that are related and relevant to the human rights crisis in the Philippines, Showing the Philippines is resilient, strong and a nation of beautiful people.

Within my intentions, I can have a framework of topics I want to introduce in my presentation. With my intentions, I can work within them and delve into certain situations and theories that support my intentions. What is important to note is that we are not trying to prove anything, merely cast light on something, like a shield of awareness.

so within my framework for my intentions, I can examine history and research the moving parts that make up the issues that are pervasive in the Philippines today.

Moving Parts and Topics :

Includes two encompassing strings of thought intersecting together: Colonialism and Imperialism history and the War on Drugs human rights crisis 

1. COLONIAL AND IMPERIAL CONTEXT 

Pre Colonial Period

Spanish Colonization 

American Colonization 

Japanese Occupation 

Note : Colonial and Imperial history is important regarding the analysis of urban planning, architecture and the racialization of spaces in context of marginalization and segregation of city spaces. Additionally, ideology and influence instilled from Colonial and Imperial forces within Filipino culture and spaces still continue to thrive and be a part of decision making and behavior within the general population. 

2. WAR ON DRUGS CONTEXT 

Origins: Duterte and Davao Death Squad 

War on Drugs Campaign in Presidency – Elected in 2016 

Note – important to know context of the human rights violations in The War on Drugs to the impoverished communities most affected – relation to organized abandonment and disproportionate environmental burdens and exposure to premature death in connection to colonial histories and war on drugs current events and circumstances 

3. Current Political Landscape and Human Rights implications

Economic Climate – socioeconomic inequalities

Extrajudicial killings of activists, journalists and drug related crime

Ferdinand Marcos Junior

4. Ongoing Imperialism

U.S Military Occupation and American Corporations

Philippines as the U.S. Playground for Military exercise

Political ideology embedded within Philippines fabric

While this is a simple outline, and will probably be expanded, I find it useful to keep going back to my intentions.

Additionally, in exploring these various points to include in education of an issue, you can look to examples of social movements that have been able to mobilize on a larger scale and implementations of educations and goals that were important to those movements. Examples include EndSars, BLM, SaveDarfur, InvisibleChildren, AAPI Hate Awareness.

will continue to explore ways to hone in on certain threads to create a concise presentation or zine about an issue/topic as I am still learning myself. In creating infographics or educational materials for issues and social movements, keep going back to the passion that you held and use that to grapple with what direction you want to go in.

continuing to create……