Dora! Where's the Map?

What is community mapping based on my experience on the past two exercises?

Community mapping is a way of identifying the places in your community; it makes it easy to analyze. It also provides a visual way of communicating to the audience. I have leaned that to be exact and accurate about your map is highly important, because people depend on it. Tourists depend on it. You really have to include the twists and turns of the map you are making so that the people who will watch it would know the specific places. In our experience on the community mapping exercise, going to the places wasn't as backbreaking as we thought it would be but the making of the map is. We were jumbled for we didn't know what to put in out 1/2 manila paper. Because if we were to put all the stores, it wouldn't fit :) That's what's tiring. hehe

How do i think it could be applied to our communities?

Simply by letting ourselves be in participation of map drawing. In this way, we will be able to familiarize places in our community, help those places who are in need of improvement. :)

from their eyes to ours.

The world is now scared to enter Mindanao, ever since the war broke in. We were scared also, but what can we do? We're already living in a place of chaos and mayhem; escaping it would be too late. It was too late for them...

Seeing the pictures from professional photojournalists made me think twice about the war ranging in Lanao. Bodies on the tv were not shown; they were censored, obviously not to scare the public with frightening images of dead people. They were on the ground, blood splattered out everywhere. It was horrible. Seeing such innocent people get killed in such a barbaric way made me feel dejected. 

We all want to stop this fighting. They wanted to tell us that listening to the news and sitting pretty all day is not the solution, the solution is to take action. 

*They must have had a lot of guts to have taken such pictures. I salute you. :)

What MDGoal struck me the most.

First of all my fellow readers, let me tell you what Millennium Development Goal is. It is a United Nations Organization that works together to stop poverty before 2015. Trying to end Extreme Poverty is their main goal. If we could achieve this, we could also put an end to the eight other goals.

The goal that struck me the most was the goal "Reduce Child Mortality". This was our assigned report. No, I didn't choose this goal because I already know facts about it. I chose this because I enjoy kids, and knowing that they would die because of a preventable disease?...it just broke my heart. To know that over 29,000 kids under the age of five die every 21 seconds is heartbreaking. Isn't it?

I really hope we could help end this catastrophe. Help the world out, join organizations to end this, lets start caring more for the kids in developing countries, give out medicines, let them enjoy life like a five-year-old kid, support the organization/organizations about child mortality. Make the world a better place. Just like what Michael Jackson sang

"Heal the world. Make it a better place. For you and for me and the entire human race. There are people dying, if you care enough for the living...
Make a better place for you and for me".

It's not yet the end. There's still hope.

This is how to achieve development-- to make a move..

Go ahead...replace her.

He said he loves her so much. She believes it with her whole heart. He's always never around, or he's there but his mind is in some distant place that only he knows where.

She talks about it. He said its nothing, he's not anywhere but there with her. She's now scared. She loves him too, but she's not sure anymore. Although his heart is hers, it's hollow inside. She talks to him again, about what's happening -- he doesn't even look at her straight in the eyes.

She never felt this way, to be so in love, to have someone there, yet feel so alone.
Isn't he supposed to be the one to wipe her tears, the one to say that he would never leave?

She doesn't know what hurts him but she can feel it too
And it just hurts so much to know that she can't do a thing
And deep down in her heart, somehow she just knows that no matter what
She'll always love him.

She has him. She wants him back. The time where she knows when he looks at her, she's the only one he sees. Where is that? Is it her who's distant or him? He said he's always been there. She said that too. Where do they go now? Is there anything left to love about?

"Go ahead...replace me." she said.

What is Development?

   It's not just money matters, nor being "techy" or changing the style of the clothes in your dresser. :)

It's more on progressive improvement on the lives of human beings; this includes all aspects such as physical, emotional, intellectual, social, perceptual, and personality development. If we can understand how people live, we will then be able to know their full potentials, there we could start saying what development really is.