Students urged to help explain APEC via technology

CEBU, Philippines - Make good use of technology and skills.

This is what the 18-year-old Earl John Besario of Cebu Normal University said as his contribution in imparting the significance of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings.

He said he would use social media such as Facebook to help other people better understand what APEC is all about.

“As a student, what I can do is to support for the success of APEC by sharing with my family and friends unsa gyod ning APEC. Pwede pod sa Facebook status,” he shared with The FREEMAN.

He said there is a need to be creative in explaining APEC to ordinary citizens especially that its meetings, which required routes to be rerouted for the security of delegates, have inconvenienced many.

“Although daghan ang maabala pero naa may resulta in the future. This (conference) is for our future. It is a conference on how to improve the member economies,” he added.

Besario, a sportswriter of CNU’s “Ang Suga” publication, was among the students and campus writers from different universities in Cebu who attended yesterday’s forum on APEC at the newly opened APEC activity center at the Provincial Capitol.

The forum was organized by the Provincial Government and Philippine Information Agency in line with efforts to make APEC understandable to ordinary people.

PIA Director-General Mari Oquiñena urged the students to make a good use of their skills and technologies, which he described as the sixth sense of today’s generation.

“I admire the skills you have. It can either inspire or destroy a nation, get a life or destroy a life, unite the province or disunite the province. It’s a matter of choice. Write about APEC, blog about it and challenge the Filipinos to be competitive,” Oquiñena said.

APEC is a forum for 21 Paci-fic Rim member economies that work towards the realization of free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific by 2020.

The platform has three pillars of agenda: trade and investment liberalization where APEC members take actions to reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade and investment; business facilitation in which member economies pursue measures to reduce the time and cost of business transactions and improve access to trade information; and economic and technical cooperation which builds the technical capacity of APEC’s diverse members to take advantage of global trade.

Cebu plays host to over 3,000 APEC delegates. It is hosting the third Senior Officials’ meeting from August 22 until September 6 this year, and ministerial meetings from September 7 to October 15.  — Michael Vencynth H. Braga/JMO (FREEMAN)