NEGROSANONS, especially those who are in the tourism sector, would like to heartily welcome the plan of Vice Governor Bong Lacson to push for more tourism programs when he becomes governor. By way of suggestion, we perceive that we need to strengthen our cultural programs in the province. We have a very good tourism officer but we also need hard –working cultural workers.
To do that, we need a cultural policy. This will contain strategies to improve the Negrosanons quality of life that would also affect one’s means of earning for a living. A cultural worker will first identify the needs of the community. This cultural worker may come from the tourism office. He will work for the cultural programs such as the protections of cultural property, buying of cultural equipment, and train cultural conditions for the needed transformation.
The cultural work should coordinate with schools, all forces of media, government, churches, and institutions specializing in arts and culture. Your cultural plan must have a cultural program and vice versa. We can follow the format of the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts. We have to make our simple plan to operate on a low budget.
Tourism officer in the province in cooperation with local cultural groups should come up with cultural programming. It is just a matter of putting up sequences of actions on operations to reach the target goal. That, should not neglect cultural education and the open field cultural development in the area.
In Silay for example, the city government has its focus on heritage, infrastructure, hometown food, the relationship of the mountain and the sea, organic farming, indigenous, and the Christian liturgical practices stated by the ancestors. All these are included by the cultural tourism officer.
Cultural planning is coming up with the concept using a method on a strategy geared towards cultural development. We can start with Department of Education (division office in the province and cities) involving teachers and local cultural workers in the preparation of leaving tools for the pupils and students. Learning tools should be about our local culture that would generate awareness and interest.
In Silay, I started working with the Learning Resources Management and Development System by providing the staff with our research materials: history, culture, imagination, folktales, food, songs, music, dancers, and even the aspirations of the people. From these materials, the staff could produce reading materials, comic books, learning books, and a journal on Silay history.
We start tourism and culture in our schools. Lastly we need the culture of tourism in us before we establish on tourism touching commerce, trade, and industry. Transformation is a necessity before the creation of something big. For Vice Governor Bong Lacson, I call it the BIG BONG THEORY.