Last November 25, 2014 a forum was conducted with local youth organizations of Cebu. This was a pre-activity to the 2nd Asian Conference for Let?s Do It! movement which was done in November 27 – 30, 2014, at Cebu, Philippines, gathering local and foreign delegates to come up with an action plan to combat illegal waste. The forum showcased the local initiatives as contribution to our own Let?s Do It! Philippines movement. 

Sustainable Energy and Enterprise Development for Communities, together with the Coalition for Better Education and the Youth for A Better Earth, spearheaded the Let?s Do It! Youth Forum, which aims to introduce Let?s Do It! movement, the fastest expanding civic movement across the globe. This movement began in Estonia on 2008 when 50,000 people gathered to clean their country in just 5 hours.

The program started with film-showing (Story of Stuff) showing how over-consumption of people and influenced the producers to make ?design-for-trash? stuff and vice versa. It exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. Then a focused-group decision (FGD) was done, and I was privileged enough to be one of the facilitators. The FGD?s objectives are to identify the root cause of Illegal Disposal of Solid Waste and to come up a general proposal to address them. It was then followed by the introduction of Let?s Do it! Movement where LDI Delegates from Estonia of Europe shared their story and its impact to the world. From their talk, we learned that Let?s Do It! World is a civic led mass movement which began in Estonia during 2008 when 50,000 people gathered to clean up the entire country in just five hours. LDI are now an international movement with 112 countries working together, engaging over 11 million participants. ?Our aim is to clean up the whole World from illegally dumped solid waste and to then keep our planet clean! We work with passion and perseverance to support the most intelligent and sustainable waste management principles in order to ensure a future clean World. To reach the essential transformation in our global society, we have set the ambitious goal to involve 350 million people by 2018. This is around 5% of the World?s population and is the estimated amount to create a lasting change,? said

Through this locally-initiated forum, Let?s Do It! Movement?s ambitious goal is slowly turning a reality. The Cebu forum alone gathered almost a hundred youth/student-leaders, just imagine if every city/area in every country will gather at least a hundred concerned individual, how impactful will that be?