On the 24th celebration of the Cordillera Day in Baay-Licuan in Abra, different organizations took advantage of the crowded event by selling their products not only to generate income but more importantly, to promote their campaigns.
BY ANGIE DE LARA
Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 12, April 27-May 3, 2008
BAAY-LICUAN, Abra — Souvenirs here, there and everywhere.
On the 24th celebration of the Cordillera Day in Baay-Licuan in Abra, different organizations took advantage of the crowded event by selling their products not only to generate income but more importantly, to promote their campaigns.
Aside from propaganda T-shirts and compact discs of songs about migration, Migrante International members also sold dangling earrings. But these were not for fashion purposes alone. Some of the earrings were made by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), who were in distress in a foreign country and were accommodated at the Migrante office upon their deportation back to the Philippines. Making earrings was a form of therapy for OFWs and for Migrante members as well after periods of intense pressure and campaigns.
Instead of using a simple carton & plastic bag for packing the earrings, Migrante used a post card bearing their campaign calls, “ End the violence, Justice for all women migrant domestic workers in the Saudi Arabia & the entire Middle East.” Also printed on the post card were some of the pictures of the abused OFWs like Mylene Mandas and those who died mysteriously such as Catherine Bautista and Louella Montenegro. The post card could be sent to a Philippine consulate/embassy or to a foreign embassy in the Philippines requesting them to investigate and solve the mentioned cases.
Ilocos Sur’s Youth Act Now! showed their creativity by making bamboo necklaces through “solar art.” They curve a piece of bamboo to a desired shape, rectangular or arc, and size, usually about two to three inches long and half an inch wide to create the pendant. The bamboo pendant was then tied with a thin cord. The pendant had pencil drawings of images, symbols or texts. The images were burned on the pendant through the use of magnifying glass, which directed the heat of the sun to the surface of the pendant. Samples of designs included rice, which symbolizes the crisis Filipinos are facing at present, and calls such as “Oust GMA” or “Makibaka”.
