Sustainability is deeply connected with how one generation transitions out of leadership to be replaced by the incoming, younger generation. All institutions and societies rise or fall on the basis of the quality of its younger generation.
One of the deepest challenges facing any Local Government Unit (LGU) is its youth. The phenomenon of increasing Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) has helped stabilized the Philippine economy. OFW remittances have now gone beyond US$20 billion per year. But it has done so at great social costs, especially for the young.
The OFW exodus has lead to crumbling families. As fathers and/or mothers work abroad, many Filipino children are growing up without either a father or a mother or both. The absence of proper parental nurturing and care ultimately leads to a range of societal problems connected with young people, including the use of drugs, petty crimes, internet addiction, joblessness, school drop-outs, and, in a significant number of instances, serious criminality.
In the societal dimension of Larga Sustainable Zarraga, the core sub-program is “Yes to an Outstanding New Generation!” or YOUNG.
This sub-program will not solve the challenge of OFWs as long as massive poverty continues to characterize Philippine development. However, it will provide quality projects that can change the lives of young people who participate in the program. And, as history has shown, outstanding individuals, under the proper societal circumstances and their own willful intention, can have tremendous influence in the history and life of a nation.
Just think of the small band of youth leaders, including Bonifacio, Mabini, del Pilar and others who liberated the Philippines from the yoke of the Spanish colonization. Jose Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, was barely 25 years old when he wrote Noli Me Tangere, the book that ultimately inflamed the imagination of thousands, triggered the Philippine revolution, and gave the Philippines its independence from the tyranny of Spain.
The objective of the YOUNG Sub-Program is to expose the young, in and outside of Zarraga, to action-oriented and transformative educational experiences that would enable them to be meaningful citizens not only of Zarraga but of Planet Earth itself.