By Kean Andrei Bagaipo | May 3, 2024
For the first time, the Silliman University (SU) College of Education Student Organization (CESO) invited students from neighboring institutions to its 2024 Inter-college Leadership Summit held April 20 at the Multi-Purpose Room.
Around 40 participants from SU, Negros Oriental State University, and Saint Paul University Dumaguete joined various activities and plenary talks centered on the theme “Pillar of Society: Education’s Role in Nation Building.”
According to CESO Governor Gerard Rick Jardin, the summit intended to “draw ideas from the student-leaders on how to improve the delivery of student services.”
“As education students, we want to highlight that our calling is more than just us delivering lessons in the four walls of our classroom,” he said. “It’s more than that — nation building.”
CESO invited two resource speakers: Henry Caesar Blanco, Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Outstanding Student Leader, and Wilkens Abordo, former public relations director of ASEAN Youth Advocates Network.
Blanco talked about creating student leadership networks to further community service while Abordo talked about empowerment through service and the role of servant leadership in advocacies and educational landscapes.
Moreover, the participants created student leaders’ advocacy action plans.
John Alfie Rendon, a first-year education student at SU, said that the opportunity fueled his passion to learn from his co-student educators and inspired him to lead and reach out to the community.
“I learned a lot during this year’s leadership summit, but the most fascinating thing is that children struggle with literacy in Math, Science, English, and Filipino,” he said. “We, therefore, developed the advocacy ‘Project Akap: Para sa mga Batang may Pangarap.’”
According to Rendon, the proposed project aimed at “reaching out to those kids once a week to impart our knowledge and abilities.”
Jardin also said that he hoped the partnership with other education students from various colleges would be “a stepping stone for much greater partnerships and more ambitious endeavors for the community” they want to serve.
The leadership summit is an annual conference in the SU College of Education, organized once per semester. This year, the event premiered the Educ Week celebration held from April 20 to 27.
Other events included the TTL Service Learning, ED Talks, Quizlet, Book Swap activity, Academic Bazaar, and recreational activities such as COE-reoke, COE-pihan, COE Zumba, Larong Pinoy, and ED Tambayan.
