The Philippines
The Philippines activity held in the City of Vigan was developed by Cesar Villanueva (University of St. La Salle Bacolod), a former member of the Executive Board of WFSF and member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Engaged Foresight and Professor Shermon Cruz (Northwestern University Laoag), and the Director of the Center for Engaged Foresight. This project introduced futures studies and foresight to strengthen the foresight awareness of decision-makers and key actors involved in shaping disaster reduction and management programs and city development planning in highly vulnerable cities and communities to climate change in the Philippines. The two-day foresight capacity building course took place in June 25-27, 2015. The focus was to enable participants to design their own strategic pathways and enhance their foresight capacities for adaptive response and strategic renewal in a climate change era. Around 35 participants, of whom 90% women leaders – mayors, city planners, disaster risk management officers, programme directors, supervisors, specialists, legislators, professors, climate reality leaders and students, from all over the country attended the course. The learning lab introduced and combined creative, critical, interpretive and action-learning approaches and game tools to analyze and imagine alternative and preferred city futures from a woman’s STEEPCVLH (social, technological, economic, environmental, political, cultural, values, legal, historical) perspective. This learning lab was designed to further explore and imagine alternatives for women-gender contexts and roles in transforming Philippine city futures. The Philippines is primarily a hierarchical and masculine society (Geert Hoffstede, 2015). Filipinos ways of thinking, perceiving, …