Rappler heads to Iloilo for AI and elections forum, voter empowerment workshops

MANILA, Philippines – How can we make an informed choice when choosing leaders to vote for in the 2025 Philippine elections?

With the rapid spread of disinformation and misuse of generative AI, easy access to facts is needed more than ever. This requires everyone’s participation in order to ensure that facts will thrive in the upcoming elections.

In line with this, Rappler’s civic engagement arm MovePH is leading a series of roadshows in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao aimed at engaging communities in promoting information integrity and voter empowerment in their localities. The roadshows also aim to gather and train future Movers, Rappler civic engagement volunteers, to write community-driven election stories that will be amplified by Rappler.

Anchored on Rappler’s call to action for the upcoming elections, the roadshow series is themed “#AmbagNatin: Championing facts for an informed choice.” The series will have three stops, namely Iloilo City, Batangas City, and Iligan City, where public fora and hands-on workshops will be conducted, with a focus on the 2025 elections, voter empowerment, and civic engagement.

The #AmbagNatin roadshow series will start in Iloilo City with various events lined up from November 19 to 20, in partnership with anti-disinformation coalition #FactsFirstPH, University of the Philippines Visayas, Daily Guardian, iWrite, and Vital Signs.

The roadshow will feature a public forum on the importance of verified information and a vibrant information landscape, especially during the elections. During the public forum, participants will hear from Rappler journalists and local newsrooms about how information integrity can affect election outcomes. There will be a panel discussion about ways to work together to ensure voters are protected from AI-powered disinformation. During the forum, participants will also interact with Rai, Rappler’s chat bot designed to relay, in conversational format, information vetted by journalists.

This public forum will be held on November 19, 9 am, at the University of the Philippines Visayas Little Theater.

Slots to the public forum are free, but seats are limited. All attendees will also be asked to download the Rappler Communities app, a news and community-building app that uses generative AI for journalism and civic engagement. Register here to join the public forum.

Deadline for registration is on November 17, 2024.

Be a Mover and join our workshops on civic engagement

Aside from the public forum, the #AmbagNatin roadshow will offer exclusive training on journalism for community-building through a series of hands-on, interactive workshops for interested Movers or volunteers for Rappler.

These workshops will engage 20 local community leaders, journalists, and youth in a community dialogue on local issues, and interactive learning sessions and activities to be held from November 19 to 20. Specifically, these will run from November 19, 1 to 5 pm; and November 20, 9 am to 5 pm. During these sessions, participants will learn more about fact-checking, reporting on local issues, creating effective multimedia content, and utilizing social media for civic engagement.

As part of the selection process for these workshops, interested participants must pitch an election-related story from their locality and be committed to cover community issues during election season for Rappler. Following the training, participants are expected to pursue stories based on their pitches, with support from Rappler.

The criteria for selecting the 20 local community leaders, journalists, and youth in Iloilo are as follows:

• At least 18 years old and based in Iloilo province
• Good writing and communication skills
• Basic knowledge of short video production preferred
• Journalism or video production experience a plus
• Interested in doing community-driven journalism
• Must have a solid pitch of an election-related story from their locality (can be text story or multimedia execution). The story pitches can cover any of these: profiles of local candidates running in their city/province, stories about community issues that local candidates must address in their platforms, comparisons of platforms of key candidates in their area, among others.
• Must be willing to help Rappler cover community stories during election season. These community stories can be similar to the ones indicated above.
• Must also attend the public forum conducted during the morning session on November 19, 2024
• Food and snacks will be provided to those selected for the workshop.

If you’re interested in joining these workshops and becoming a Mover, please submit an application here.

Deadline for application is on November 14, 11:59 pm. Those applying for the workshop should also answer the form for the public forum.

Applicants will be screened by Rappler. All will be notified about the status of their applications by November 18.

For any questions or concerns, email move.ph@rappler.com. – Rappler.com

For media inquiries, please contact Samantha Bagayas, Rappler’s head of civic engagement, at samantha.bagayas@rappler.com.