MANILA – Foundever™, a global leader in the customer experience (CX) industry, partnered with the local government of Puerto Princesa City in Palawan to plant thirty-seven trees as part of the celebration of Pista y ang Cagueban or “Feast of the Forest”.
Twenty-nine Foundever associates participated in the tree planting activity headed by Foundever in Palawan’s Senior Site Director Freda Lou Caguin, Senior Site Director and Operations Head for Foundever in Malaysia Jen Joloc, and Directors of Operations Haziel Jovellonas and Irvin Perono.
The longstanding annual event is now on its 33rd year. It was launched in 1991 as a way to preserve forest and marine resources for future generations.
Palawan is one of the few places in the country that retains a high level of biodiversity with its coastal and marine environments consisting of coral reefs, mangrove swamps, sea grass, and marine meadows. In fact, 41% of Palawan’s land area is still forested.
“Ecological protection is one of Foundever’s advocacies especially because we are part of the Palawan community through our headquarters in Puerto Princesa City. A visit to Palawan teaches us a valuable lesson—if we do not act now, we will continue to destroy our natural habitats at an alarming rate. This would be a disastrous development that will eventually cause species of plants and animals to go extinct—and including us, humans. Nature does not exist outside of us; we are part of it. Whatever harms nature eventually harms us,” Caguin said.
Pista y ang Cagueban combines the traditional fiesta atmosphere and celebration with a massive forest tree-planting effort and other activities meant to restore, protect, and conserve terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Such activities also aim to eliminate destructive methods of fishing and farming.
Caguin explained further that Pista y ang Cagueban is proof that protecting ecosystems is most successful when it rallies the community. “Government alone cannot protect Palawan’s ecology. Private enterprise alone won’t be effective. It takes a holistic effort, a partnership among the government and private sectors, and the communities they serve. Only then will our restorative, protective, and conservation efforts achieve real, lasting, and sustainable impact for the future,” she said.
According to the Puerto Princesa City website, some two million trees were planted from 1991 to 2009 thanks to Pista y ang Cagueban.
