By Carla Adeline Via
With the intent of bringing together global student leaders, Ang Sandigan and the Dumaguete City Local Youth Development Office (LYDO) hosted the Harvard Philippine Forum 2025 (HPF) last Jan. 9 at the Dumaguete City Session Hall.
Themed “Strengthening Grassroots Leadership: Bridging Local and Global Perspectives,” the forum aimed to encourage interactions among youth leaders from diverse cultural backgrounds and pave the way for collaborations on an international scale.
The forum also provided a space for international and local delegates to explore societal challenges that exist in the Philippines and United States.
Moreover, its participants only consisted of student leaders from the Harvard cohort and Silliman University (SU) in previous years.
For this year, Ang Sandigan extended the opportunity to the various youth organizations registered under the LYDO, including those from the Dumaguete City Youth Volunteers Network.
Through this collaboration, the organization also aimed to bring their engagement to the “grassroots level” by focusing on youth leaders at the barangay level.
“For the Harvard delegates, this was their first opportunity to interact with youth outside Silliman, offering them a broader perspective on local youth leadership and community dynamics,” Ang Sandigan President Antonio Jose Delicana shared.
Moreover, HPF participant and facilitator Nurshema Upi expressed her enthusiasm for the event, stating that the experience had prompted her to become a “leader of character, empathy, and resilience.”
However, when asked about her expectations for future iterations, she expressed her disappointment for the time constraints during the forum.
“I believe there were a few sessions that we had to skip since some of [them] took longer than its limit,” she shared.
