Mabuhay ASEAN! An Enlightening Experience at YSEALI Go NGO [Photos]

As an alumni of the U.S. Embassy, I get to be invited to events and conferences where I can either join for my professional development or help out as mentor and give back to the community.

For YSEALI Go NGO, I was recommended to become a mentor for the 5-day event to be held right here in sunny Cebu, Philippines where the best beaches reside. It was to be held right at Movenpick, Punta Engano, Mactan Island in Cebu.

See the “new bridge” where the participants travel through to get to Cebu City from the conference venue

At first, I was hesitant to join given that I was recently up to the neck with tasks for work and clients but then I realized that it was that time of the year that I should offer my time to help others out. Without further hesitation, I sent in my application as mentor and was glad to be accepted.

This was fated to be the event that will imprint on me as a business owner and co-founder of an NGO.

The YSEALI Go NGO event is an initiative by the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, Cultural Vistas, and the U.S. Embassy Manila. It was a 5-day conference from November 16–20 where 80 participants from 10 countries in ASEAN gathered together to learn about different topics that would help their startup, growing, or established NGOs, go through mentoring sessions, interact with different experts and speakers, and for them to network with fellow ASEAN youth leaders.

I didn’t really know what the event was about aside from the fact that there will be a handful of young community leaders eager to change the world through their organizations. I was excited that I will get to be a part of the event to impart my knowledge, to be able to share about similar challenges we have with the Iligan Bloggers Society, Inc. and also to help out through my knowledge and consulting on digital marketing for their initiatives.

Little did I know that this mentor will also emerge to become a fellow learner after the conference.

The day before the event, I checked in the hotel in the evening to be able to settle down and get ready for the event the next day. The front desk of the hotel had to call the organizers because they mentioned that my check-in was for tomorrow and not the night before. I just left them and sat in the waiting area to let them figure it out when I was called by the front desk. She said that my roommate also arrived and that they will already let us check in.

I realized that it was as if by fate that I got to meet my roommate. Her name is Nguyet Van Do, Founder and Director Live and Learn for Environment and Community from Hanoi, Vietnam.

We introduced ourselves and went directly to our shared accommodation in the venue. It was already past dinner time and I was so hungry so we went out to see what our meal options were. The Sails resto at the venue had the food that we could afford (lol!) so we settled to ordering our meals there. My room mate ordered her hot food and local beer while I ordered just regular chicken, my favorite!

I was glad that we were able to get to know each other well ahead than the other participants who are still set to arrive the next day.

Roomie and me having our dinner

To note, this was the first time ever that I got to live with a roommate in my whole lifetime. Well, of course that’s aside from having a husband, the official roomie. It was a new experience for me so I had to do everything in my introvertness power to be civil and respectful and aware of what I do inside the accommodations. Haha.

Nov 15, 2016 — Day 1

Day 1 was officially the arrival day of all the participants. What’s funny here is that I actually woke up just to have breakfast at 9AM before they close.

And of course, I savored the local sikwate which is my favorite. I hope the other participants got to taste this local delicacy.

I realized now of the fact that almost everyone that arrived was presented with a local cultural dance to welcome them. I didn’t get to savor that moment given that I was a local. But then again, the beauty there was that I barely got stressed with my one taxi ride trip to the venue compared to their hours of travel with less sleep and missed flights just to get to the event!

First item in the afternoon was an orientation for all of the mentors. I got to learn that we will be working with another partner mentor all throughout the event. Got to be paired with Bhunnat Phan from Cambodia!

We wrapped up with the orientation but since everyone was still settling down and waiting for dinnertime, we got to gather some of the mentors to chat and get to know each other.

Meeting the mentors

Billy from Indonesia, Jarrah from the Philippines, Michelle from Indonesia, Yuki from Vietnam, Jessica from the Philippines and Nathan from USA were some of the brilliant mentors I met and chatted up with before everything got serious. We talked about balut (aborted duck), durian, and Trump. The stories shared got interesting but we had to disband to prepare for dinner.

I got reunited with Lovette Jam, my dear old friend, founder and leader of Iligan Bloggers Society, Inc. It was well our goal to have her join the event to see how we can move the org forward and YSEALI Go NGO was perfect for her!

Reunited with Jam from Iligan

This time Mr. Ryan Bradeen opened the event with a speech on what to expect with the opportunity that was given to everyone in the event.

It was a good start to the event and everyone from each country had to gather round and practice their parts for the presentation for the cultural night for Day 2!

Nov 16, 2016 — Day 2

It was amazing how inclusive the event was. Ivy got her assigned ALS interpreter Ms. Adeline to help her out during the sessions. That was how awesome this event is.

Adeline, the ALS interpreter for Ivy

It was game time for us mentors. We had our first round of participants to work with. The mentoring sessions started after each of the talks and we get to do a roundtable discussion of the items learned, implementation plans, and possible challenges.

Our first mentoring group!

Now, let me take this moment to talk about my awesome mentor partner Bong Bunnath Phann. I call him Bong because it means brother in Cambodia and it’s respectful to call him that.

My Bong is an awesome leader in his org. He is the Youth Program Adviser for Kampuchean Action for Primary Education Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Bong Bhunnat Phann, my awesome mentor partner

What is memorable about him is when he approached me while waiting for our next mentoring session. We got to chat about what I do and he said, “You know I am amazed at what you do. You’re a woman and you own your business. It’s not common in Cambodia to be that.”

He is quite passionate about the cause and their org and the challenges they faced that he is willing to share this to the participants we have on our mentoring sessions.

After the sessions, we all prepared for the the ASEAN Cultural Night.

Here we all get to meet and have a group photo with the U.S. Representative to ASEAN Ms. Nini Hachigan.

Look at us and the glorious ASEAN handshake!

From here, there were cultural presentations from each country. Most memorable for me are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and of course the Philippines.

What I learned here is that cramming with group work still produces amazing results as long as there is cooperation, a skill we can apply on our NGOs.

Nov 17, 2016 — Day 3

This day was continuation of a whole day of learning and immersion into the different topics involving NGO management.

What resonated with me was the talk of Ehon Chan from Malaysia who shares about his work for MaGIC helping incubate social enterprises in their country. I believe this is where the revolution is headed assuming there is increase in status of the Philippines from developing to a developed nation.

His advice on building fans instead of merely followers is something that I also constantly share with our clients at Third Team Media.

After the whole morning of sessions and short period in the afternoon, we traveled from Lapu-Lapu to Cebu City for another round of cultural immersion to see a famous Cebu landmark and to dine as per the invitation of Cebu’s Governor Hilario Davide.

Inside the bus, I learned the different temperament of the fellow delegates from the Philippines. How enlightening confined spaces can be! Aside from the ceaseless banter of the boys, we were treated to meditiation techniques and sign language classes right inside the bus!

The Magellan’s Cross was where we were dropped off to and from there the rest of the delegates went shopping for souvenirs and having photo opps in the area.

We then proceeded to go to the Cebu Provincial Capitol, the majestic building in the heart of Cebu and had another round of photo opp. This time we also got to have a photo with Ms. Carolyn Glassman of the U.S. Embassy too.

We were treated to a sumptuous dinner and various dances from Sinulog by the talented dancers from schools around Cebu. I was so proud watching all the participants recording and dancing and clapping their hands watching the dancers.

When the mother of dances was performed, I swelled with pride — me an adopted daughter of Cebu and our ASEAN guests watching our yearly Sinulog festival dance. It was such as sight!

So of course, I had to take a photo with them. This is better than doing it all sweaty in the streets for the actual festival!

Nov 18, 2016 — Day 4

Well, Day 4 is a continuation of more talks and more mentoring involvement. But aside from those, for me, it’s being able to understand deeper what each of the participants are all about, what their orgs do, what their common challenges are. Most of all, it made understand which of the participants we might be able to collaborate with once we are done with the whole conference.

I was able to understand what each wonderful women on our table for lunch is doing and aiming to do.

Nadine Casino from Modern Nanays of Mindanao may be running an upstart NGO but she has the expertise and the heart for the work she has to do to get it beyond starting up.

Ledloren Manriquez is quite occupied and busy the whole time due to deadlines but she is one of the first to offer resources to one of the participants to help out.

After the afternoon talks and breakout session, we were given our free time to roam around Cebu. Here’s Billy and his disappointed face for the P1000 bill. Hahaha!

Anyway, that P1000 bill was actually helpful to get a good meal that night with my family. Since I am just in Cebu, I decided to meetup with my family who I have not seen for 4 days already.

Met up with them at Zubuchon in The Outlets at Pueblo Verde and enjoyed the night together.

The other participants though had a wonderful time being together and exploring the delicacies of foodtrip areas in Cebu. Some had their boodle fight, unlimited shrimps, barbeque, and lechons.

Nov 19, 2016 — Day 5 (LAST DAY)

Now on to the last day, the day that made us realize that it was all coming to an end. For me, it started with a status from Kurt Cabillon that mentioned sepanx. Then it went downhill from there. (LOL) It prompted me to also post a status about sepanx (separation anxiety) on our YSEALI Go NGO group.

I posted some sort of reminder for the group too about taking the last group photos, exchanging business cards, taking selfies, etc. Anthony Naglieri was kind enough to mention that he will uploading the contact numbers and info of everyone from the event so we can continue networking or potentially working together after the event. That was a good followup.

The day continued with a funny.. uhmm.. moment with this speaker and the rest of the participants. What moment? Well, almost everyone thought he was hot. That’s it.

Anyway, for the last talk, I was in the table with this cool gang from Indonesia and Singapore. We talked about predictions for the future as based on the talk and came up with robots replacing humans and automation in everything. It was an eye opener.

Since we’re a mix of optimists and pessimists, all of us agreed that a World War might/can happen in order to shake up the status quo of the world for it to move to the next “phase”. It’s crazy. Anyway, these are just some predictions and possibilities.

So anyway, I took my own advice to heart and took selfies and group photos here and there.

Hello and goodbye, dear roomie!

Hello and goodbye, Kuya Nash!

Hello and goodbye, dear Monyvann!

Hello and goodbye, dear Jam!

Oh, and above was our look for the fellowship night. We were awarded our certificates, had a wonderful meal, and partied all night.

I’ll stop here because I am sure it will just bring in sepanx memories. In fact I have a whole playlist for the songs played that night on Spotify.

Nov 21, 2016 — Day 6

The fellowship night was full of goodbyes. This just became real for me, too — Everyone will be leaving me here in Cebu.

Goodbye YSEALI.

Wait, I mean, see you soon.

I hope all the friendships and memories and lessons learned will last a lifetime for all of us.

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