Summer Seminar!

This is an unexpected summer experience.

The International Justice Mission in cooperation with the Peace and Conflict Journalism invited people in media for a seminar entitled "Report on Human Trafficking"

Basically, it gives inputs to media practitioners on how to handle Human trafficking issues.

I can consider this as my first ever seminar as a journalist since I wasn't able to fully attend the seminar last November 23, 2010 about the safety of media in commemoration of the 1st year of the Ampatuan Massacre.

We arrived at Nalusuan Island around 10am last Saturday (April 30, 2011)
I was with Aaron (Cameraman) and other media people from print and radio.

When we arrived at the island, we had a little spare time so we decided to take pictures :)

We spent the whole day discussing about Reporting Human Trafficking and also the new tools that we can use in covering different news stories.

Carmi of ABS-CBN and Patrick of Cebu daily News were my groupmates and we were assigned on a tool called "Peel the Onion"

The tool will help us decipher the real intentions of news sources as well as to dig deeper in what people are trying to say.

At around 11pm that night we decided to go Night Swimming.
We were thinking that if we do swimming early in the morning it might drain our energy since we still have a long day ahead.
Another advantage of night swimming is that we can have a very good night rest :))

Early the next morning, we departed for Cebu City.
We stayed in ANC Banilad for our outputs.

During the afternoon session, we were able to interview "Trafficked Women"
It was a very harsh experience for them but I'm glad that they were able to get past through it.
Like them, all of us are victims of an unjust society.
And unless we address the structural and cultural problems that we are experiencing, it will be hard to battle the different kind of direct violence that we are experiencing.