Uriel on YSEALI Summit 2023

Everyone has a story, and we're eager to hear yours! This section helps us understand your journey with YSEALI.

 
Your YSEALI Journey — Let's take a walk down memory lane to revisit your YSEALI experience. We're curious about the program(s) that have shaped your growth thus far! This will give us an idea of your overall engagement with YSEALI.
 
Can you recall the exact name of the YSEALI program which had the most significant impact on you, Uriel? — Your subsequent answers will be in the context of this program. This will help us identify the program's unique aspects relevant to your experience.

YSEALI Learns Virtual Course: (1) Community Organizing for Action, 4 sessions; (2) Understanding Climate Change, 4 sessions; and (3) Developing, Mentoring, and Supporting Youth Leadership, 3 sessions

 
 
 
At YSEALI Summit 2023, authenticity matters to us. We want to get to know you–your skills, your experiences, and your future goals. — If you're considering using AI tools like ChatGPT, please ensure that your application remains a genuine reflection of who you are and what you've experienced.
 
Describe your participation in 150 words or less. — Briefly walk us through your experience. Think of this as your 'elevator pitch' about your most impactful YSEALI experience.
    Highlight your role, key moments, takeaways, and accomplishments in said YSEALI program.

Throughout this, personal recommendations I shared include: The most impactful way to solve the climate crisis is by cutting supply chains out from highest emitter of carbon (China) and moving the manufacturing into nations (along the ASEAN region) obedient to globally-accepted guidelines on climate mitigation. This will impact, among other things, not only the climate problem but also the geopolitical threat from a neighboring superpower over ASEAN nations—also since such supply chain imbalance also incentivizes its government’s known operations in oppressing its ordinary citizens. Additionally, in my dialogue to conflict resolution sessions in said courses, having in mind caution and elaboration as to positive and negative kinds of so-called “Avoiders” in handling conflict, to beware of getting problems piling up for types who really need to address problems—and this next which I realized should be further addressed—so long as one is acting out of good faith intentions.

 
 
 

YSEALI themes you have actively engaged with. Since participating in YSEALI Learns Virtual Course: (1) Community Organizing for Action, 4 sessions; (2) Understanding Climate Change, 4 sessions; and (3) Developing, Mentoring, and Supporting Youth Leadership, 3 sessions., what impact have you made in the field of Civic Engagement, Economic Empowerment, Governance and Society, Sustainable Development and the Environment?

 

We'd love to know more about your contributions! — YSEALI Summit 2023 is all about celebrating the contributions made by members like you. This is your chance to shine.

 

Share how your participation in said YSEALI program has translated into real-world impact in your focus area.

I view civics wholly (this YSEALI program included, especially given its format) as not any different to my personal interest for documentaries in certain aspects, i.e. for potentially applicable knowledge it provides and—more especially with civics—(positive) involvement with social concerns or special interest/s it discusses. Said course had reinforced my capabilities for civic and leadership skills. Among other civic mediums where, thankfully, I transmitted some meaningful thought-leadership, I note recorded ASEAN Youth Forum sessions wherein, aside echoing truths and educating about perspectives gained from said YSEALI program, the helpfulness of leadership, youth mentorship, civic engagement and other principles taught therein had reinforced my capabilities in adding value to my civic discourse. Now, post-invitation to candidacy for delegation to its Board, I’m hoping to represent perspectives from truths and lived experiences in our country. This activism partially reflects my main work which—to a large extent, locally-speaking—I do in my independent capacity towards first shaping the social settings right for introduction of progressive ideas novel (new) to societal norms and conventions. Albeit often essentially of abstract or intangible work often understated but a monumentally important role nevertheless, critical to civic success are prior works of messengers profoundly campaigning and promoting such ideas. Otherwise, movements nor their frontlines’ tangible actions just won’t have enough legitimacy nor validity in view of public perception, hence, resistance, therefore, ineffective. Through years of refinement, I’m confident of the personal formula I’ve developed for raising awareness to objectively promote right kinds of (social) change.

 
 
 

Great leaders have a vision, and we're confident you do too. This is your chance to tell us what you hope for the future!

 

Your Vision and Contributions — Your upcoming answers are crucial for us to fully understand your aspirations and how well they align with the Summit's goals.
We recognize the incredible work each YSEALI Alumni is doing. However, with only 150 spots available, we encourage you to provide thoughtful and concise answers that truly represent your vision and contributions.

 

How will the Summit benefit your current work or community initiatives? — Discuss the specific benefits you hope to gain from the Summit that will advance your current projects or career.

Just like in pitching for a start-up to investors for outstanding performers, there are a lot of subtexts that are unsexy parts of entirety of such process but just seen overgeneralized into big marketing pitch events or expos. The marketing and multimedia frameworks copied from me came from a lot of the same unsexy parts of development process: (dinner) talks with people that started with conversing about plans for a monthly to weekly email newsletter that over time had developed into a more and more complex framework concept: a media framework for civic cause. This, too, is analogous to how start enterprises are really developed. I dun’no with other people but such method works for me, has been transferable into how I am resiliently progressing in civics itself, gradually, despite inconvenient truths I bring into discourse. And my main point: I view such participation as not any different in significance to this whole, beautiful process, my civic cause, aside adding credentials and the people I’d know and may potentially connect to and immerse more in person with YSEALI that will definitely have humbling symbolic significance.

 
 
 

What unique contributions will you bring to the Summit, Uriel? — Share the unique skills or perspectives you plan to bring that will enrich the Summit experience for those involved.

Aside my outward intersectional identification with social identities as youth, LGBTQIA+ individuals and being a Person With Disability myself (constant eye-movement), I’ve immersed in differing communities, walk of life, industries and varying political-leanings and realities in them. I don’t present these insights in any pretentious way; even the PWD sector, in my assessment, seems undermined and its civics activities, too, are being used as huddle stages in entirety to identify those with similar political-leanings for post-program, seminar, event recruitment. I do not prefer contributing into intercultural dialogues any falsehood about relevant social facts here, class-dynamics, et cetera. I value democracy and its principles and do not present our society, race, nation and culture in a sanitized and edited way. Opposed to the decade that we Filipinos as a society had always been advertising our own race and nationalism to impose how we run our society onto other societies and as a collective strive for us to be a popular culture. And this negative form of nationalism has historically often been associated with how a nation forgets of its domestic problems. For instance, China’s outward strive for dominance but then see the realities how ordinary civilians are domestically suffering. We have these same realities and status quo, locally and outwardly. Not only with alliance to prevailing politics, most here who’se main personal advertisements are centered on or predicated upon political dissidence against prevailing factions “is still a politics” indicative of some power struggle, either identification with political powers that be still makes one a beneficiary of the system. But almost no one is a dissident against wrongs in our own norms and culture, inconvenient truths that need to come out into proper mediums. I am confident that I can change the status quo and am now at least still gaining some degree of appeal to some locals despite these unconventional domestic views.

 
 
 

Outline your immediate action plan for the first month following the Summit, Uriel. — Provide a concrete plan detailing the steps you'll take in the first month post-Summit to apply your learnings.
    A SMART plan (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) can help you articulate your steps more clearly.

If ever, a $700 budget when converted into Philippine peso can fund an initial formation (workshop) regarding any one of my primary concerns including: civics being politicized domestically, and subtle stereotyping of youth identity. These may be consolidated into a comprehensive set of societal agendas since I have in mind a format like whole-day-meetings similar in corporate settings, aside having in mind program design analogous to ideation process in drawing board, brainstorming sessions in filmmaking, and focus group study format. For some necessary unsexy parts of executing action plans, I have the option to ask around my networks and other advocacy blocks on costing estimation, auditing assistance, also on project management. I’d begin with a small no. of people (also since that would be an experimentation stage accounting for refinements before replication into larger scale), maybe 4 or 5, and be pioneer change-makers in their civics areas, industry, walk of life. Aside my present networks and national-scale groups I’m moderating, co-founders may also be gathered via ads and other means. It would basically be an action plan to produce a post-meeting action plan from the former. I’ve often been writing and researching work equivalent to a team’s worth in my largely independent campaigns and advocacy. I’d create a relevant set of reflection and self-assessment points, and key ideas and concepts I’d present, entirely towards engaging that empowered collective with a common vision to conceive an action plan, and, equipped with this, collaborate to longitudinally engage in funding competitions from there, hence, sustainability. Formal speaker circuits aren’t necessary at this stage, inspired young individuals and virtuous people of any age-cohort will be capable. Good change to negative cultural processes may be inevitable but it must at least start with a small no. of people, even just with one or two, to really spark some difference.

 
 
 

What long-term impact do you aim to achieve through your ongoing efforts? — Identify the challenge you're addressing, the strategies you'll use, and the systemic change you aim for. Be both realistic and ambitious.

Fixing civic norms itself here, hence, genuine progressivism, would thus aid in making more impact on concerns I have mainly from perspective of my intersectional identities, all towards psychologically-safe social environments for vulnerable, marginalized individuals. Many youth are stereotyped and subject under negative social barriers, neither empowered to discern and comprehend such pernicious cultural processes I’m conditioned to observe. Domestic LGBTQIA+ community has internal inequality, internalized ableism and extreme political division adopted from norms prevailing in broader society. And the PWD sector… aside being politicized, civic advocacy fronts and circuits seem silent at worst and do only brief mentions at best for dialogues that should accompany current state legislation for a socio-economically empowering Monthly PWD Allowance. (near-accomplished) They deny brainstorming towards readying recommendations in advance once said statute is approved, wherein actual implementation mostly take at least a year of procedures (e.g. consultations), with priorities, only less than a month or few. Said policy would give significant independence to grassroots PWDs, while incumbents, to cling to strategic civic positioning for political reasons, longitudinally, want PWDs dependent on their observably repetitive discourse same to their previous and other dialogues, i.e. non-innovations. Instead, they’re observably too busy on congregating for multimedia entity-creation (again, political positioning) or methodically towards such—despite having no other relevant discourse to offer. Before, I thought the problem was just novelty being challenging to their organizational conventions on why, despite promotions as public resource, also my semi-complete PWD Cooperative Labor System framework hasn’t been entertained by any—due to such hidden agendas, aside fact that such proposal came from a specific youth identity they undemocratically reject giving representation to. Raising awareness about these systemic problems and irrational structures in domestic civics is a necessary transition.

 
 
 

What's your vision for YSEALI's role in the next 10 years? — Share your thoughts on how YSEALI could evolve or expand its impact in the coming decade.

So long as humanity exists, ASEAN has to live, trade and deal with the US. If family members, without malice, aren’t getting along well due to differences, given that they certainly have to deal with one another for eternity, how would they be advised? The prevailing views about the US by many in our societies are remarkably negative, despite not reflecting the entirety of US society, i.e. segments in its society are democratic too and oppose anti-Asian hate amongst their compatriots. Nations in ASEAN and the US need each other so long as human civilization exists. The future of ASEAN lies in its young members (future leaders) who, I’m optimistic, are impressionable and—aside socio-political and cultural settings shaped by intercultural dialogues and global connectivity in this information age—likely have better outlook on Western Democracies as time progresses, like our Asian neighbors Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Given such trends, I promote mutually tapping in advance into these, hence, relations beyond those mainly given only by mediocre trade and economic ties. I desire a US working harder in addressing anti-Asian hate within its society and a reciprocation from our part of the world by addressing anti-US/anti-West sentiments in our societies. Moreover, even ASEAN alone with the combined military resources and capabilities of its nations can’t realistically maintain its geopolitical security from Chinese Government oppression. These crucial supra-national considerations where ASEAN should shift towards has been my desire to campaign, addressing vocally the first time in my recorded interview with ASEAN Youth Forum Secretariat and where now, post-invitation to candidacy, I’m hoping to be a delegate in its Board for representing (truths in) our country. Personally, I’m continually seeking appropriate mediums where to channel these concerns.