blogfestI have a couple of good news to share.

First is about what is touted as a gathering of Asian bloggers, Blogfest.Asia ’09 set to be held on Nov. 5-8 in Hong Kong.

Among the speakers are fellow bloggers Blogie Robillo and Juned Sonido. They will share insights on “Peace Initiatives through Blogging” based on the experience of Mindanao bloggers as well as introduce the Philippine blogosphere to the participants.

I will also be a Blogfest.asia speaker on the topic “Bloggers and social media users in the aftermath of typhoons Ketsana and Parma”.

Our summer capital submerged in muddy water
Pepeng (Parma) submerges Baguio City, the Philippines' summer capital, in muddy water (Photo by Associated Press grabbed from Yahoo! News)

The people of the Cordilleras are sending the rest of the country and the world  a call for help, a plea for support, in the middle of horrible tragedies in Northern Luzon caused by typhoon Pepeng (Parma).

More than 200 deaths have been recorded in the Cordillera areas alone. The stench of rotting corpses has apparently replaced the smell of strawberries in Baguio City. This urgent appeal includes a request for donations of lime to be applied on bodies of those who died in landslides near our beloved City of Pines.

URGENT APPEAL FOR SUPPORT FOR THE VICTIMS OF TYPHOON PEPENG IN THE CORDILLERA, PHILIPPINES
Oct. 9, 2009

BAGUIO CITY—The Cordillera Region in Northern Luzon, homeland of indigenous peoples collectively known as Igorots, is one of the areas hit most with Typhoon Pepeng, after the supertyphoon Ondoy. This mountainous region may not have been as victimized by the flood, but the very nature of the land and terrain has resulted in massive, disastrous landslides that claimed both properties and lives, especially in the mining-ravaged areas of Itogon and Mankayan in Benguet province.

Grabbed from wordpressboy.com
Grabbed from wordpressboy.com

[UPDATE: Paypal has apologized.]

Yesterday, TXTPower turned over to the Philippine National Red Cross a fourth check (P493,047.20) containing donations sent in by folks worldwide who answered TXTPower’s call for donations for victims of typhoon Ondoy in the Philippines.

We did this project with one simple cause in mind: Provide people across the world a way to safely and securely make a donation for typhoon victims in our country. And we are glad and heartened by the trust given by nearly 1,000 donors from 37 countries who pitched in a total of P1,678,437.63 in donations already in the hands of the Red Cross.

But unknown to many,  Paypal intervened last week, froze the account we used for accepting donations, and ruined our fundraising campaign