School: SLU-LHS
    Baguio, Benguet, Philippines

29 students, ages 15 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on February 18, 2010. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2010

Classes and Teachers: 3-Mapagpakumbaba and Sir Vincent Tabor

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

1. Description of Our Community

“Beautiful Baguio with mountains so grand crowned with green pine trees and sashed with moss so fine you are a jewel of our dear Mother Land…” Most often, these are the words that our mayor, Hon. Reynaldo Bautista, utters when making speeches. Indeed, Baguio is a beautiful place. It is full of wonderful sceneries and surrounded by green pine trees. Boasting great natural beauty, chilly weather, a tourist-friendly people and extraordinary vistas, the “City of Pines” is the culmination of your search for the idyllic escape from the tropical heat of the Philippine lowlands. Our community, Baguio, coined its name from the Ibaloi word “Bag-iw”, a mossy flowering plant. It is located in the northern part of the Philippines and bounded by the municipality of Tuba in the south, Itogon in the west, and La Trinidad in the north and east. Our city occupies about 57 square kilometers of hilly land about 1,524 meters high in the southwestern portion of the Cordillera Central mountain range. It is popularly called the “Summer Capital of the Philippines” because its temperature which ranges from 15 to 25C is an ideal one during the summer. Baguio is also known as “The Cleanest and Greenest City” because of its fresh air and clean surroundings. You can’t barely see trash scattered around the city during the 1960’s. The air you breathe in is fresh and not filled with greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. But now a day, this reputation of our city is being destroyed because of the rapid increase of garbage around the city and presence of greenhouse gases in the air.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is all about the Environmental Awareness and Issues of our community. In line with this our main topic is Solid Waste Management of Baguio City which is the main environmental issue of the city. The possible and effective ways will also be shown. Our web project will hopefully open the eyes of the citizens in Baguio because we will present the problems and the current state of Baguio when it comes to the waste disposal. We will show and encourage everyone to segregate their trash to lessen the volume of garbage being collected every day. We will also present the actions of the government in the said problem. We will show and describe the situation in the dumpsite of Baguio and the lack of the government in seeing the needs of the dumpsite for example, the machines and the trucks. 

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

We students of SLU-LHS wishes to have new computers because we would like to work with computers better and faster than the computers we have now since our current computer to encounters a lot of problems and because of that surely our performances would be affected as well. We also would like to have a faster internet access because we have to spend a lot of time waiting to be connected and a little time for our research.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

First of all, we had to bear with the smell of garbage at the dumpsite when we were gathering data. We had little problem when we were looking for the righy person to be interviewed on the issue because we did not know where their office was and where to find them and that was also the reason why we were not able to send notices or letters about our proposal for an interview. The interview with the sanitary inspector, Mr. Orro, was a little bit rushed because they were about to go somewhere but he was very kind to answer our questions clearly and honestly.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our participation in this International Cyberfair means a lot to us because it gave us ideas on how the environment affects our daily life as students, children and as people in the community because they realized how our actions caused the depletion of the environment. We were able to showcase our talents and skills in building a website that will inform people about the environments' situation now, we also learned that each of us has a role in this project that no matter how difficult it is as we see, it may bring us and our school honor and recognition. As ordinary teens, we learned to give importance to the environment which is already polluted with garbage, we appreciated the surrounding we still see now and we also developed our confidence in mingling with other people we meet as we make the website.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Our project fits the school’s guideline which is to be an authentic Christian worker through becoming a model and inspiration for all in a way that we students, made this project so that we could open those blind eyes of people who does not care on what is happening nowadays in our community. We made this project for we all know that teenagers are always using the internet and here in our website we can inform them about what is happening and what possible things can they do in helping our community. We learned to become more cooperative and dependable after making our project. We also learned more techniques on how to interview people and how to take good pictures. We discovered that our school is eager to let their students try interesting works such as joining this competition.

Our role in our school is to be a model and inspiration to others because we want them to do things that can help our mother nature and we want to leave a legacy that would last, a legacy about how we helped the community in solving such problems in Solid Waste Management. Using Internet for teaching and learning is more effective than traditional methods because if you look into details, we can see that the internet can provide more information than a thousand books. Internet is even faster and definitely easier when it comes in researching.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

To complete this project, we used our digital camera to capture the realities our society is facing nowadays. And that, with this technology, we are able to show the problems that we have in our community that gradually destroys our environment. We also used the books regarding Baguio City’s waste management in our city library. With these books, we got information about how our local government is handling our solid waste management system, the volume of garbage collected daily, and the possible causes why this issue continues to haunt each and every household. Interviewing the garbage collectors is one way to get more information because they have first-hand experience and, therefore, are a good source of credible information. 

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

To better observe the situation at Irisan Dumpsite, we personally set – off to do some field work. Courteously and politely, keeping proper etiquette in mind, we interviewed a sanitary inspector named Michael Orro. This “basurero” (garbage collector) explained that a sanitary inspector levels with a garbage collector. He gave us all the necessary information we needed with regards to Waste Management. He was of great help in accomplishing our web project.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

Baguio City is well-known for being the “Greenest Place in the Philippines” because of her cleanliness before and the many trees and plants that she have. That’s why during summer breaks, many tourists around the world and the country would visit here and would have their vacation.  When doing the interviews around the assigned places within the city, we were able to introduce our project by saying our main purpose why we ask them about what they know about Baguio. After having a conversation with them, we become more confident in asking for their opinions and knowledge about our city’s current condition on cleanliness. We think that our website can make a great difference because it shows concrete and clear proof of the present situation of our solid waste management in the city. Our presentation is unique in the sense that it is certainly appropriate and is very timely in the present situation of the whole world and not just here in the city. People in the community who visited the website became aware of the status of solid waste management in Baguio since we will reveal what is really going on. They also learned the details of solid waste management and how to help in the environment in little ways. We think that it would have the same effects on the other people around the world. 

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

We asked help from different people in our community who gave us adequate information that would help us in accomplishing this project. The very first person who made this project possible, who gave us advice and became very supportive, was our subject teacher, Mr. Vincent Tabor. He was also the one who came with us to the landfill of Baguio City. We also sought help from our very supportive parents who allowed us to go to the landfill and interview people who may give information that would make this project successful. Special thanks to Mr. Michael Orro, the sanitary inspector, who gave us information about the solid waste management here in our city. Our group also exerted much effort for the accomplishment of this project. We gave our time to create websites, articles and the like in order to have a successful output. We would also like to thank people who gave us the chance to join the International Cyberfair Competition.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Yes, there were interesting discoveries that we made like how many tons of trash our city dumps everyday and the tools used in the dumpsite are not being used and they are rusty, we learned that the people who works in the dumpsite really sacrifices there health because of the horrifying smell brought about by the different kind of garbage. We also learned that you can get use to the smell once you spend time in there,and we were surprised that a landscape was covered by the garbage and it was because of garbage benching.Most of all however we have learned and realized the importance of waste segregation and its contribution to solid waste management. Sometimes the problem is not the garbage but instead the problem is the people's way of disposing of their garbage.