Since its establishment in 2019, SBS Idinayale has been an active force for change in St. Bridget School community. Founded by the HUMSS students, the organization has been spearheading events and campaigns in alignment with social issues and current events. Remember last school year, when Martial Law survivors came to personally talk about their experiences under the Marcos regime? What about the noise barrage and massive chalk mural on the wall of the school’s parking lot? Those were all feats led by SBS Idinayale in their freshman year as an organization.
Even though classes are entirely online this school year due to COVID-19, SBS Idinayale is still going strong. On September 25, 2020, they held a successful webinar for the High School department called “KapeTalks: A Bitter Reality Check”. Attendees took to Zoom to hear about freedom of speech, the legal parameters of the Anti-Terror Law, and the role of the youth in today’s society from three guest speakers: Respectively, Ms. Rey Valmores-Salinas, Atty. Neri Colmenares, and Mx. Micah Simon. This was to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the Marcos regime’s infamous Martial Law, and to remind Bridgetines that the fight for justice is far from over.
To learn more about the webinar and their process, The Bridgetine had a conversation with SBS Idinayale President, Chelsea Mejillano, and External Relations officer, Nikka Duran.
1. Before anything else, this is your second year as an organization. Could you describe what SBS Idinayale is all about?
SBS Idinayale is an organization established by students from the HUMSS strand of the Senior High School department. It tackles socio-political issues and advocates gender-based equality and social justice. It is the first HUMSS-founded organization in St. Bridget School ever since the K-12 curriculum was implemented.
2. This the second year you did an event for the Martial Law anniversary. How did you make sure it didn’t feel the same as it did last year while still being relevant?
When we were in the process of brainstorming for the event, we asked our Grade 11 members to give their insights about our Martial Law symposium last year as part of the audience. Although the event was successful, they said that they felt like we were only focusing on one side of the story, for there were some parts that we did not touch on. Looking back, we realized how we might have focused too much on establishing the detrimental impacts of ML through our speakers’ experiences, that we missed in considering the weight that the given information would put on the audience. Since we focused too much on the past, we might’ve not been able to make the audience fully understand why and how we should prevent our history from being repeated.
This year, with the help of our other members, we came up with an event that would inclusively discuss the past’s connection to our present while acknowledging the realities we are currently facing in our country. We wanted to glue the pieces together and ensure that we’d be able to effectively touch on the crucial points that would instill a sense of urgency to [sic] our audience. In terms of being relevant, we think we were able to somehow maintain that by staying active in [sic] social media to achieve our objective of bridging the past to the present and focusing on how our experiences under the current administration resemble events in the past.
3. You haven’t done an entirely virtual event before. How did you manage to make it such a success?
Honestly, it was nerve-wracking because we really had no idea how to hold an event online, especially when the risk of experiencing major technical difficulties because of slow internet connection was looming over our heads. We felt uncertain if [sic] we could make it work, but our school admin helped us with preparing the technicalities and communicating with teachers and students; therefore, the process became more manageable. We also had members who were experienced with using Zoom to hold webinars, so we all figured it out together and even tried holding a simulated livestream on the night before the event. We assigned as many backups as we could so that someone would be able to stand in for the task just in case someone’s internet connection wavered. Thankfully, on the day of the event, there were no major internet connectivity issues on our end as the organizers.
4. The title you chose for our webinar was “KapeTalks: A Bitter Reality Check”, and you stayed consistent with it throughout the webinar by having your hosts and guest speakers bring drinks. Is there a reason you chose this theme?
Actually, the whole concept of the event was just a planned project that we were asked of in the beginning of the school year. The tagline, “a bitter reality check” was actually just an idea that one of us thought of while brainstorming for the “planned project” and we figured it sounded really witty and catchy, so we decided to include it in the title. We envisioned a late-night show kind of “feel” where the hosts and guest speakers converse about different topics and experiences while having coffee. Having conversations over coffee has also become a common habit of Filipinos. Although the current state of our nation is quite a serious matter to discuss, we wanted the talk to feel casual and laid-back so that the speakers would be able to connect with the audience, reach a certain level of understanding with them, and meet halfway in which the audience is able to process and reflect on the information being delivered by the speakers.
5. We had an amazing line-up of guest speakers that we all enjoyed hearing from. Why did you choose them specifically and what was it like reaching out to them?
For KapeTalks, we wanted to discuss the connection of our past to the current state of our nation through different perspectives from people who really felt the weight of today’s pressing issues. Since we aimed to discuss the Anti-Terror Law (ATL), we wanted to invite a lawyer who can provide a legal and factual basis about the law, specifically its boundaries, its effects on us as citizens, and the gravity it holds to the injustice we are already facing. Next, we wanted to hear from the experiences of an activist whose freedom of speech was suppressed and how the ATL affected his or her way of expressing advocacies. Lastly, we wanted to have a perspective from a young influencer who uses his or her platforms to spread advocacies and raise awareness on social issues; we also wanted to gain insight about the role of the youth in this society and what we can do to enact social change and justice.
Nikka: Reaching out to them was hard, especially to Atty. Neri, because I needed to email both him and his secretaries to get a response. Unlike Mx. Micah and Ms. Salinas, they both responded through social media so it was easier to communicate with them.
6. Thank you for taking the time to respond! To wrap it up, what do you hope we as students take away from KapeTalks?
Nikka: I really hope that the students who watched and participated in our event, be more socially informed and aware, especially because of our current administration’s unbelievable response to the pandemic. Also, I hope they are encouraged to always fight for their beliefs and speak their mind out.
Chelsea: I hope everyone who participated in KapeTalks realizes the strength she holds as a student and as a member of the youth, to enact social justice and fight for what she deems is right. Hopefully, we felt the urge to continuously educate ourselves about our history amidst this age of revisionism, for our past constantly shapes our present. I hope KapeTalks empowered us to assert our rights and remember that no one can subject us to forcible control, for we have the capacity to stand firmly against any form of manipulation and abuse.
Written by: Isabel Victorino, 10 – St. Angela