CULTURAL DIMENSION: EDUCE

Given the present circumstances, the economic and ecological dimensions of SIAD are vital. However, all efforts in this area will be for naught if there is NO change in the mindset, values, and behavior that maintain the status quo, one that is generating a lot of poverty and its related problems in the country. Therefore, SIAD installation efforts also have to focus on concomitant and convergent efforts in the area of the culture of Zarraga.

In the cultural dimension of “Larga Sustainable Zarraga”, the core sub-program is EDUCE or Education for Cultural Empowerment.

Culture is the “software”, the “meme” that runs all aspects of society, including economics, ecological restoration efforts, and politics. It is therefore important to pay attention to what citizens-at-large are being educated to believe and actualize. Hence, education plays a key role to cultural transformation today and in the future to come.

SEA chose the acronym EDUCE to describe its core sub-program under the cultural dimension of SIAD. Education comes from the Latin word, educere, which means to draw out. Education draws out the latent, amazing, and wide-ranging potentials of human beings. As one observer notes, education is not about filling buckets, but lighting fires.

The objective of the sub-program EDUCE is to provide Zarraga citizens with unusual opportunities to experience quality education, whether through formal or informal approaches.