Foundation University and Wellness Culture

On July 7, 2007, the Institute of Youth Sports for Peace (IYSPeace) of the Foundation University (FU) in Dumaguete City was established with the vision of becoming the training center for a new breed of physical education teachers, coaches and sports leaders knowledgeable in current information and practices in the discipline of sports science and management, and imbued with the zeal and spirit of promoting values inherent in the practice of sports, among them: no cheating, respect for authority, brotherhood and peace, and care for the environment.

Dr. Aparicio (Perry) Mequi, former chairman of the Philippine Sports Commission and now Dean of the FU Graduate School and founding director of IYSPeace, emphasizes that the Institute is an “experiment in peace-building” through the purposeful creation of a culture of youth sports in the province of Negros Oriental, the Visayas and Northern Mindanao.” In creating the IYSPeace, the founders reflected on the words of Louis Valley who stated that “sports should be thought of as a double-edged sword, capable of cutting in opposite directions. The direction the sword cuts depends on those who swings it (not on the sword itself)”.

Essentially, what Valley means is that sport can be used for good or for bad; it can develop good character but it can also bring out the worst in people; it can further develop youth with positive personalities but can worsen the selfish and full of themselves to begin with.

And it is the aim of FU that the sports sword is the Children and Youth @ Play Center which is swung by the IYSPeace. The Center believes in the saying that “every child has the right to play” – no child who wants to play and participates in sports shall be turned away. There will be no benchwarmers.

 The foremost area of concern articulated by IYSPeace is wellness, where a growing incidence of obesity and lifestyle diseases due to sedentary living and faulty eating habits are now health challenges worldwide and in the Philippines.

The Institute’s strategy to respond to this concern is to create a “walking culture” which can give rise to “walkable communities”, a global movement which research shows improves people’s wellness (residents of walkable communities are six to seven pounds lighter than urban dwellers, for example) A walkable community is, according to the concept paper on the Negros Oriental Youth for Walkable Communities (NOYWC) is a place where an individual could reasonably walk to at least seven other locations – school, hospital, market, public transport, grocery store, church, shopping mall, city hall, restaurant, etc. – besides his home.

The NOYWC, which has for its slogan, “We Embrace the Freedom of Space” is a youth-initiated program conceptualized by the FU Student Government. It has for its objective, the designation of at least one car–free road in each of the 25 cities and municipalities of Negros Oriental. One concrete program of the students of the FU Department of Architecture is the pedestrianization of Dumaguete’s Rizal Boulevard. The students hope to present the plan to Mayor Chiquiting Sagarbarria by March.

Parallel to the pedestrianization program is the IYSPeace’s Wellness Walk initiative where all students of FU are required to walk a quarter marathon (10.5 km) per semester as part of the Physical Education (PE) requirements for graduation over the four semesters of PE. Upon graduation, students shall have walked a total of the full 42-kilometer marathon and are inducted into the “Walkers for Life Association”.

The idea according to Mequi is to create a marathon and walking culture and make Dumaguete a mecca for marathon and distance running and recreational and competitive walking. There are models for such an objective: Finland and Sweden used to be centers for development of hurdlers and javelin throwers; Jamaica created a national identity as a source of sprinters and Kenya and Ethiopia have become known for their marathon runners equal to none.

The Wellness Walk and Walkers for Life program serve as the mass-based and feeder system to the Dumaguete Adventure Marathon (DAM) which in turn can produce Olympic race walkers and marathon runners. What is unique about DAM (held every third Sunday of November) is that the event promotes rice conservation together with the Asia Rice Foundation and the Philippine Rice Research Institute. Instead of cash, winners and participants in the DAM receive bags and sacks of rice.

Certainly, there are legions of possibilities which institutions of higher learning can explore in the field of sports and wellness that can contribute to overall national development. Other institutions could for example conduct research on the hypothesis that active participation in sports among the youth engenders a similar enthusiasm and interest in the affairs of the community and local governance.

 FU and IYSPeace are leading the way and have provided the templates, so to speak.