#BeTheChange: Social Good Summit 2024 speakers and sessions
MANILA, Philippines – It’s time to gear up for Social Good Summit 2024, Rappler’s biggest annual gathering of our community, partners, leaders, and changemakers.
This year’s summit is set to take place on October 19, 2024, a Saturday, at the Teresa Yuchengco Auditorium of De La Salle University Manila, from 9 am to 6 pm.
The theme we’re tackling this year is how we can use technology to tell impactful stories and make a difference in pressing public issues, an especially critical conversation as we near the 2025 Philippine elections.
“Be The Change: How Storytelling and Technology Empower Changemakers” is a summit that boasts a jam-packed agenda of discussions and workshops about challenges to the country’s education system, how to protect truth-tellers and our information ecosystem from disinformation during an election year, how vertical video formats popular among the youth can be used for advocacies, and about how good governance can make our cities more liveable and climate-resilient.
We’ve invited the brightest minds and most critical voices to tackle these topics. Our journalists will moderate and host the various panels and sessions.
Here’s what’s in store for you at the summit.
Education Secretary Angara to keynote and participate in panel discussion, Tech and the education crisis
Education Secretary Sonny Angara will open the summit in the morning with a keynote address. He will then participate in a panel discussion about how technology can help fill gaps in the country’s basic education system.
Joining him in the discussion is Professor Maria Mercedes Rodrigo of Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Information Systems and Computer Science. She heads the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences and is an expert on artificial intelligence in education, learning analytics, and educational games.
The panel discussion will be moderated by Rappler CEO and 2021 Nobel laureate Maria Ressa.
Arshie Larga, Lyqa Maravilla, and more in panel discussion, Content creation for a cause
Influencers who have mastered the short vertical video format and have been using TikTok and Instagram to raise awareness about pressing societal issues will speak at a panel moderated by Rappler senior producer JC Gotinga.
Panelists:
- Arshie Larga – A pharmacist who uses TikTok to debunk health-related disinformation and raise awareness about health issues
- Lyqa Maravilla – Teacher, motivational speaker, and content creator who uses videos to raise awareness and create educational content
- Jo Sebastian – A nutritionist-dietitian who uses content creation to advocate for a healthier relationship with food
- Buji Babiera – A cyclist and founder of First Bike Ride who uses Instagram and storytelling to advocate for active transportation
Four mayors in panel discussion, Governing for liveable cities
Good governance is top of mind for Filipinos with 2025 electoral candidates filing their candidates in the first week of October.
This last plenary session shines the spotlight on how good governance in cities can affect the quality of life of all Filipinos. In this session moderated by Rappler head of community Pia Ranada, mayors will speak about their platforms for liveability and how they are addressing gut issues faced by their constituents every day.
Panelists:
- Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte
- Muntinlupa Mayor Ruffy Biazon
- Isabela City Mayor Sitti Hataman
- Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong
Rappler partners under the Make Manila Liveable movement will pose questions to mayors about various aspects of liveability – transportation, cost of living, pollution, disaster management, health, and more.
Panelists for breakout sessions on climate-resilient cities and fighting disinformation during 2025 elections
In the afternoon, summit participants will break out into two simultaneous sessions.
One session, featuring other FactsFirstPH coalition members, will focus on new online threats to civil society, activists, journalists, and other truth-tellers, and what can be done to fight disinformation during election season.
We’ll tackle red-tagging, hacking, disinformation campaigns, online harassment, deep fakes, corrupt AI, and how different sectors of society can come together to respond to these harms.
The other breakout session, to be organized with Make Manila Liveable partners and government partners, will be about what it takes to build climate-resilient cities. How can we make Philippine cities better prepared for the impacts of climate change, like flooding and heatwaves?
Policy-makers and front liners in national government and local government, experts in disaster response and climate change adaptation in academe, urban planners and designers, environmentalists, and more, come together for a discussion and workshop on what voters should demand from 2025 electoral candidates.
Here are our panelists:
- Commission on Elections chairman George Garcia
- Office of Civil Defense Administrator Ariel Nepomuceno
- Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy
- Dr. Mahar Lagmay, UP Resilience Institute and Project NOAH
- Alberto Kimpo, Quezon City Assistant Administrator for Operations
We’ll be announcing more speakers in the coming days. Bookmark this page to stay tuned.
How to join Social Good Summit 2024
Want to be part of our summit? Here’s how you can join.
To attend as a participant, you can obtain your tickets below, or through this EventBrite page:
Here are the ticket options:
- P599 – Regular ticket
- P999 – Regular ticket + 3-month subscription to Rappler+, our premium membership program
- Free via special Rappler+ offer (see below)
For both paid ticket options above, you will also need to download the Rappler Communities app and show the app on your phone at the entrance to the summit venue. The app is free on both Play Store and App Store.
The app gives you unlimited and free access to Rappler journalism, anywhere, anytime. It’s also a way to help to our newsroom, allowing us to reach you directly and giving us independence from big tech platforms, in terms of distribution.
A special Rappler+ offer
Get a free ticket to the Social Good Summit when you sign up for the Rappler+ yearly plan (P3,500) from September 8 to October 8. Slots are limited! Email plus@rappler.com with proof of your sign-up to confirm your slot.
Click the button below to sign up:
Being a Rappler+ member is a great way to both make the most of our journalism, and support the work we do.
Rappler+ members become part of an exclusive community of supporters that get advance access to our investigative stories, an insider experience of our newsroom, special briefings with our editors and journalists, and more.
We hope you’re as excited as we are for Social Good Summit 2024. Hope to see you there! – Rappler.com