SECTORAL representatives from the city’s academe, business, church, government, media and the civil society will be coming together for a 2-day workshop to be administered by the University of Asia and the Pacific that hopefully will make them champions of responsible citizenship in Naga City, particularly in the sector where they belong.

The workshop, a brainchild of Naga City Mayor Jesse M. Robredo, will take place June 3-4 at the Naga Regent Hotel to design a civic education program for Naga City. Incidentally, the multi-awarded mayor was once a resource speaker in a similarly focused workshop for young leaders sponsored by USAID a few months ago.

It will, among others, put into motion the operative words such as civic virtue, nationhood, excellence in work, and civic governance in the light of Naga City’s continuing campaign to do things even better with its own people as co-partners. Stressing that good governance must be complemented by responsible citizenship, the city mayor, in his letter invitation to prospective participants said that the city government can only do so much; that our citizens must do their part. The mayor expects that after the workshop, the participants will become active advocates of responsible citizenship and collaborators of the city government to promote good citizenship among the rest of the Nagueños in whose hands the city’s growth — political, moral, and economic — largely depends.

Issues such as nationhood, civic culture, participation in governance, and economic citizenship will be tackled by the participants upon brief presentations and open forum to be moderated by highly competent resource speakers, such as Dr. Paul Dumol, Clement Camposano, Mishariff Tillah, and John Lawrence Avila, all of UA&P. The UA&P sprang from what used to be the Center for Research and Communication, once a leading think-tank in Asia.

To give you a preview of what the workshop would try to imbue its participants with, let me paraphrase some key thoughts when US Ambassador Ricciardone at one point talked about civic education: “Many scholars believe it was the Roman armies that ensured Rome’s stability and longevity for nearly 500 years. They are wrong. It wasn’t the armies, or the wealth, or Roman discipline or Roman ingenuity or even the Roman laws. What really ensured Rome’s success was one quality, the ancient virtue the Romans called “civitas”. Civitas is a devotion of the citizens to their society that transcended even their deep devotion to their families. No one loved their sons and daughters more than the Romans, no one loved gold more than the Romans, no one loved a good business deal more than a Roman, but few Romans would sacrifice the welfare of their country to help their children, or to increase their own wealth, or to improve their own status. That is civitas. Or civic responsibility which is crucial to a stable, prosperous nation.”

According to the American ambassador, in communities with a strong sense of civic responsibility, people tend to have better health, better schools, higher productivity, less crime, and more responsive government. (Yes, indeed. Think of Japan. Of Holland. Of England. And yes, watch for the coming out of Vietnam, sooner than one can expect —jbp)

In today’s setting, according to a paper presented by the UA&P, we see at least four major defects we have as citizens: The first is the tendency to act only for the good of oneself, or one’s family, even at the expense of the nation. Similar to this is the tendency to act only for the good of one’s friends or provincemates, again at the expense of the nation. A second defect is readily visible in the streets of our cities: the traffic caused by inconsiderate drivers or pedestrians, the litter, the poorly made roads or sidewalks, vandalism, and smoking in public utility vehicles even when there is an ordinance against it. A third defect is the timidity of people with regard to participating in public issues or to taking the cudgels for them. There is a fourth defect that is not obviously related to citizenship, and that is lack of excellence in work. However, the paper says, if we consider the place of work, we realize that it is what weaves the lives of citizens into what we call fabric. We rely on people other than our families because we rely on one another’s work. Improvement in work, in the fullest sense of the phrase, can only mean improvement in citizenship. All these defects are related to citizenship – either to our understanding or practice of it.

Amidst these defects, civic education plays an important role to transform a nation. It communicates a vital message: that it is the people who can make a difference – in the community and in the nation. Such message, in turn tells this: that you as an individual is important, that you count and that you are needed in making our nation great.

True, Rome was not built in a day. That is why, in Naga City we are now taking the first step towards the cultivation of responsible citizenship, thanks to the city government for initiating a program that eventually will be owned by the Nagueños themselves. And the time would come that other cities and communities would again follow us on this initiative, just as they have been doing with our best practices in various fields of governance, education, procurement, and people empowerment.