democracy discourse fellow
Gang Capati
Gang Capati is primarily a writer, publisher, a public intellectual, and an alternative educator best known for founding Rock Ed Philippines, a multi-project creative collective guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Country
Philippines
Categories
Citizen Safety
Social Welfare
Rock Ed advocates civic education through rock and roll culture, mainly programs held with volunteer artists outside the classroom. She is a staunch advocate of volunteerism, and remains to be a prime organizer of disaster relief operations since 2005. In 2010, she was recognized as one of The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS), and received the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) award on the same year. She has produced music, full production ballets, hundreds of rock concerts and numerous large music festivals, and has published a book of essays written by national athletes over the early pandemic months. She is the mental health clinician in charge of some elite athletes including the first Olympic gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz, three-time billiards World Champion Rubilen Amit, and many other elite athletes under the Philippine Olympic Committee-Athletes’ Commission.
She is presently trauma and neuroscience research fellow of Boston’s Trauma Research Foundation involved in clinical research on the brain and behavior translating studies into the South East Asian context and translating research papers on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) to Filipino. As a certified clinical trauma professional, Capati works with psychiatrists from Portland, Boston, and Makati handle extreme cases of trauma-induced mental disorders.
Barangay Sansino is her multi-disciplinary approach to gathering relevant data to find ways for the government to provide mental health support by finding more ways to calcify connections between the citizen and local government to ensure everyone’s safety in public spaces.
Barangay Sansino
SANSINO has hypothesized that perhaps when it came to the safety of citizens we were asking the wrong questions. The driving force behind this is to be courageous enough to ask all the whys and why nots in order to arrive to the optimal zone of safety, where answers to questions during a crisis are clear and true.
The core group is composed of the Program Director (Gang Badoy Capati), a team of researchers and documentors, a network of universities, select subject matter experts, and cluster communities of active volunteer networks.
This proposal covers the initial phase of this community-centered research identifying the most common questions from the perspective of the vulnerable population within the transport system.
This project, beyond community organizing, goes deep into the psyche of the Filipino. It lies on top of our intense need to even the playing field for Filipino citizens. Even if it is in the form of access to networks and sources of support and safety. In a democracy, the right to feel safe should not be the privilege of the few; it must be commonplace.
This is the start of a bigger idea to provide Filipinos the chance to assist their LGUs to build safer public spaces. I stand by my contention that peace and progress is most possible when a nation prioritizes the mental health of its citizens, and a safe citizen is a contributing citizen. It will take time. But in this era of low trust and wanting systems of safety, how can we not take a stab at this?
The relevant data gathered, the conversations begun, the questions harvested will allow us to find tech possibilities to find answers together.
Outlined in this proposal is only the first step—to give every Filipino citizen “someone to call” during a crisis involving safety. After this research season, we can evolve into an epidemic of safety by engaging gas stations, convenience stores, delivery riders to participate in this web of safety we so badly need on the ground.
What better place to start than in a democratic discourse gathering better questions and inviting everyone to collectively search for answers regarding safety. Barangay Sansino is the venue that will be focused on the need for everyone to be on equal footing when it comes to accessing relevant, pertinent, optimally helpful information. This will be the imagined barangay where we gather and give everyone the agency to be safe. This is the space where we make sure that everyone is appropriately served by the local government units who promised on election day to do so.
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