VolXXVI No. 77B Dec 12, 2014 GIS training for Philippine Federation for Environmental Concerns and its partners Group picture of the participants with the NGTC personnel P hilippine Federation for Environmental Concerns (PFEC) recently tapped the NAMRIA Geomatics Training Center (NGTC) for Basic GIS Training using Quantum 2.6 software. The training was held at the office of the Federation for Philippine Environment (FPE), one of PFEC partners, in Teachers Village, Quezon City on 01 – 05 December 2014. The resource person was Alvin F. Laurio with Rina Grace G. Gersalia and Marco Arkiel Ilagan as technical assistants. Five of the 25 training participants are technical assistants of FPE while the rest are representatives from the following foundations or partners: The Philippine Disaster Recovery Foundation (PDRF), The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), Non-Timber Forest Products- Exchange Programme (NTFP-EP), Fostering People Education Empowerment Enterprise, Philippine Tropical Forest Conversation Foundation (PTFCF), Haribon Foundation, and DENR-PENRO for Rizal, Region 4-A. The Basic GIS Training Course aimed to have GIS experts in PFEC and its partner agencies and to produce an actual thematic map consolidating through GIS reforestation efforts of PFEC and its partner agencies. The training is part of the bigger programme entitiled “Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) Application for Mapping and Spatial Monitoring of Rainforestation, National Greening Program, and other Intervention Areas.” Being part of the network of organizations that support the partnership agreement among DENR, PTFCF, and FPE on NGP, the members of the Rain Forest Restoration Initiative (RFRI) and Marikina Watershed Initiative need to be equipped and capacitated with the knowledge and skills in GIS. This is according to Mr. Dazzles R. Lobapis, the PFEC Officer In Charge Executive Director. He further said that the training will ensure that both DENR NGP staff and RFRI members assisting various local organizations will have the necessary skills on GIS to support the NGP. Such skills will then be used to come up with clear and concrete bases such as validated maps and geo-referenced points, and to support organizations that advocate full and transparent implementation of NGP. The participants also plan to take Advance GIS Training next year. Limmuel C. Sagun readers can e-mail: [email protected] or fax letter to +63 2 887 5466 for their comments and suggestion