Back to Leyte for More Community Work (and Caffeine)

Mozilla Philippines’ first visit in Leyte last July has successfully resulted to a number of students being added to the community. Computer Science and Information Technology students from Visayas State University and Southern Luzon State University showed interest in contributing to Mozilla projects. Some had signed up already as Student Reps and have been in contact with us since then. Meeting them again to get updates, to hear their plans as volunteers and to help them understand their roles more seemed quite a good idea. And so we thought of holding 2 MozCoffee events on 2 separate days as follow up activities.

(I wasn’t part of the first group that went three months ago. I was supposed to join but I had to cancel my flight days before the departure due to urgent matters at work.)

Here are two things why we think these meetings are important:
1. There is currently no Mozilla Representative overseeing the efforts in the Visayas region
2. There are many talented and committed Students Reps in Leyte

You see, much of the efforts are done here in Luzon since the majority of Mozilla Reps are based in Metro Manila and Laguna (with the exception of Zamboanga in south Mindanao which is being led by one of our energetic educator Mozilla Rep). So by re-visiting Leyte, we extend our recruitment to nearby provinces like Cebu and Samar and slowly establish a “base” in that region with the help of the Student Reps. These same students have cited “connections” and plans to meet with a couple of more schools in Visayas. Furthermore, we’re looking at the possibility of having at least 3 Mozilla Reps there in the near future.

Another interesting news we learned is that their provincial government is strongly supporting the use of Free and Open Source Software and is offering various training programs for students and professionals such as web development and Android application development. This is an ongoing effort to attract local and foreign investors to start software businesses in the cities. And we look forward to being part of one of those events. We hope everything will go well as planned!

Thank you very much to our Student Reps in Leyte for the warm welcome! Thanks also to Bebidas Coffee Bar for the awesome cafe/bar experience! Till next time!

Related blog post:
MozCoffee in Leyte (by Marlon Luzano) http://marlonluzano17.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/mozcoffe-in-leyte/