fruits of endeavors

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Improving Resources and Coastal Environment in Balayan, Batangas

ANAKBALAYANs collaborative approach in promoting environmental education has gaining

results in the municipality.

Information and education campaigns made in schools, groups, and coastal communitieswhich was started in the 2

ndquarter of 2006 up to the present made children aware of

environmental and resources concerns. The effects can be relatively seen and observed during

ordinary days when children are in the shorelines and in the community.


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Resource and coastal environment improvements have been part of student activities aside

from their academics. Student groups such as Youth for Environment and Society Organizations

(YES-O) from secondary schools in the municipality included forestation activities in their

program plan. Schools also signify their willingness to participate in any resources and coastal

environment activities of ANAKBALAYAN. In communications to the federation, BalayanNational High School and San Piro National High School requested ANAKBALAYAN that they

may be linked to offices or establishments for trees and mangroves seedlings for their

forestation activities and that they may participate to the federation resources and coastal

improvement activities.

With informations on global warming, climate change and resources depletion,communities are now much eager to share their efforts to revert the phenomenon.

At the community level, residents are now aware of the importance of biodiversity. Two

male resident of Brgy. 9 while drinking liquor at the shore noticed a pawikan presumed to be

searching for her nest to lay its egg. The residents guarded the animal till early morning and

bought it to the office of the federation for necessary actions. ANAKBALAYAN communicated to

CENRO whose employee put a tag and release the pawikan. This happened in December of


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2007. A month after, a resident of Brgy. San Piro also noticed crawling creatures behind his

home. 66 hatchlings of pawikan were taken to the office of the federation by the finder. Upon

communication with CENRO and PAWIKAN, ANAKBALAYAN together with the municipal fishery

technician released the hatchlings to the same place they were hatched till all gone to the sea.

Last December 26, 2008, three fishermen from Brgy. 10 saw another pawikan crawling near

Walkbay, a new place for leisure and anticipated to be a tourist attraction of the municipality.It was communicated to the fishery law enforcement team, the bantay-dagat then bought it to

the office of the federation. It should be released that night, however the fishery technician

who is directly supervising the team asked the tanods to wait till morning after they have

presented it to CENRO. The pawikan was released the next morning.

The federation is a recipient of a project grant in support of multisectoral

partnership building for the sustainable development of the municipal waters of

Balayan, under the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP)-PEMSEA joint communiqu.

With the partnership building activities the federation has worked, establishments are

now extending their support to resources and coastal environment. During the culmination of

International coastal CleanUp in September of 2008, Motortrade-Balayan, a motorbike dealer in

the municipality joined hands in the federation program of improving Binambang River.


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Said establishment is an additional to the ongoing partners of the federation, Jollibee-Balayan

and BCFTPP. The latter provided funds for the federation member (BDSFA) artificial reef project

in March of 2008.

After the training on pollution data gathering, made in 2nd quarter of 2007, quarter

monitoring of water quality of Balayan Municipal Waters was conducted up to the present.


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With the able support of the PG-ENRO, Batangas Environmental Laboratory Office helped

ANAKBALAYAN to analyze the water samples.

The result were discussed in the community through group discussions, member organization

meetings, and local government units visits.

Such discussions resulted to cleanup programs of the community headed by the local

government units. The activities are monitored and documented by the federation. In some

instances where time and availability is free leaders of the federation whether or not they are

resident of that community participates in the activity.

Municipal mayor Emmanuel Fronda while monitoring the coastal areas.


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These efforts are intended for the improvement of lives in the coastal communities and

preservation of our natural wealth- the resources. To gauge the impact, ANAKBALAYAN

continuously monitor the fisher folk condition through actual interviews, community visits, the

fishery productivity through Fish Stock Assessments and the resources through actual surveyand inventory.


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Data, initiatives and results are stored at the federation Resource Information Center at its

office in Tolentino Boulevard, Barangay District #10, Balayan, Batangas. Currently these data

are being put to database as inspired by PEMSEAs IIMS. The federation is trying to modify the

system to suit the local community capacity to store data by building a local data management

program in local language and excluding tables and fields of national, regional and provincial

concerns.


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