MANY may think the life of a diplomat’s wife is all parties and cocktails. That is
farthest from the truth if you ask Sylvia Tay, wife of Belgian Ambassador
Roland van Remoortele.
Tay, who is an active supporter of Activistar,
a private-sector advocacy group in Singapore. If
you ask her what keeps her busy nowadays, she would tell you that she has a
full calendar meeting with local officials, governments agencies, schools and
private companies in an effort to drum up participation and support for the
City Beautiful Manila-Young Mayor Competition to be held in Singapore in April
2015.
The
contest is an international township-planning competition that taps high-school
and university students to develop plans to improve sustainability within a
target city. Activistar
has been running the competition for the past four years, and for its fifth
year, it trains its attention on the city of Manila. Previous cities that have
been the focus of this competition include Hanoi, Iskandar Malaysia and Yangon. Tay
says Singapore has been actively campaigning itself as a city with good
integrated urban planning. Tay says the group has identified Manila as its focus for
next year’s competition since it is the premier city in the Philippines. “We
felt that people should look at Manila and make it a case study and see what
can be done to encourage the local government to do something,” she explains.
“Every time tourists come to the Philippines, they pass through the Naia
[Ninoy
Aquino International Airport] on their way to Boracay
or Cebu or elsewhere. Everybody gives the city of Manila a miss. Yet, it’s a
pity because it is where your origins started. You
have Quiapo
and Chinatown, which were both centers
of commerce in the past. Even in Tondo,
they have uncovered ancient relics. Something can still be done to attract
tourists to stay in Manila, to improve business and to make it a city that is
enjoyable for its residents.”
A number of companies have already signed up to support the effort.
Sponsors of the township competition include ABB, AES Philippines, The Mind
Museum, and Bases Conversion
and Development Authority, as well as the Office of the City Mayor of
Manila, the Department of Education and the Department of Tourism. The
CLC in Singapore has supported the effort for the past four years.
For inquiries about sponsorship, e-mail sylvia.van.remoortele@activistar.com.
Joseph Cortes
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