Guided by the Lasallian Family’s tradition of service to God and nation, LIFE has started to define its future plans, programs, roles, and responsibilities. The Institute will work with the various environmental programs of the different La Salle schools and their affiliates to provide technical assistance and draw on available experience and expertise from the Lasallian family, as needed.

LIFE is supervised by the La Salle Provincialate, Central House of the De La Salle Brothers in the Philippines.

Operation Watershed

For its flagship project, LIFE has chosen the large and complex watershed which contains the 21 sub-basins surrounding Laguna the Bay, the lake, the Pasig River and its significant tributaries, and the areas impacted by the Pasig River discharge into Manila Bay. LIFE will partner with the residents of communities and NGOs in the watershed.

It will collaborate with government agencies such as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Laguna Lake Development Agency, academic institutions, and private organizations.

With the hope of protecting and promoting the biodiversity in the area, LIFE will tap various Lasallian institutions, organizations and individuals. This project is expected to identify and raise many environmental concerns, from watershed management to area development. The Institute hopes to integrate these various concerns with the La Salle schools’ curriculum development, research thrust, and values formation program.

But the flagship watershed management project is just the start of LIFE’s long line of anticipated short-medium-and long-term environmental and natural resources management projects. By 2011, the centenary of Lasallian education in the country, LIFE hopes to find all La Salle schools having made significant contributions to environmental education and the improvement of sub-basins in the flagship watershed project.

LIFE People and Support

LIFE is headed by La Salle alumnus Bienvenido Eusebio, who is also the director of the Natural Resources Management Program of De La Salle University-Manado in Indonesia. In its initial phase, LIFE will tap the support of volunteer faculty members and researchers of the various Lasallian institutions. Alumni and friends here and abroad who are experts in the field of environmental management as well as those from other disciplines are welcome to extend assistance. The Institute will seek the help of, among others, agriculturists, foresters, soil and ground water experts, economists, legal experts, sociologists, and communication specialists. It will also require the support of its partner community and the local government.

SO MANY people ask a lot of questions and still end up without answers. One man, a Filipino-American, asked one question and found the path to life.

All Bienvenido Eusebio, 70, wanted to know three years ago was, “Are we being good stewards of God’s creation?”

That one question brought him back home to the Philippines after 10 years in Indonesia and 30 years in the United States to launch the Lasallian Institute for the Environment (LIFE).

LIFE, an institute with only five staff members, is now all set to plant a million trees that could spell the difference for the country’s rapidly disappearing forests.

Eusebio, LIFE’s volunteer executive director, offered up a certificate bearing LIFE’s pledge during a Mass said by Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales to launch the Earth Day celebration at the former Smokey Mountain dump in Manila’s Tondo district.

De La Salle Philippines, through LIFE, has committed to plant a million trees by 2011, the educational institution’s centennial anniversary in the country. The planting season starts in June.

“This can’t happen overnight … but we think this is possible if everyone plants,” said Eusebio, citing La Salle’s more than 100,000 alumni and 50,000 students.

200,000 trees a year

LIFE is aiming for 200,000 trees a year.

A backyard, a subdivision, a park, a private resort, a mountain, denuded forest land - any open space not prone to logging or commercial use of timber - are sites being considered by LIFE.

The group is also seeking communities that are sincerely interested in saving their natural resources, Eusebio said.

La Salle intends to transfer responsibility over the project to the communities after three years.

“We need more than a million trees. For our part, we just want to be able to look back and say we planted a million and we did it for Mother Earth,” Eusebio said.

The man carries the burden of doing something for the planet right in his homeland.

US environment agency

“I worked for a polluter for 10 years,” said Eusebio, recalling his stint in the chemical industry in the United States after receiving his master’s degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He then spent the next 30 years with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), heading a team of scientists developing pollution control devices with the National Air Pollution Administration, the EPA’s predecessor.

When the EPA was created, Eusebio was assigned to its regional office and spent most of his years in Washington D.C., developing regulations and federal environmental programs for the states.

Soon he flew to Indonesia to do various environmental projects, including saving Lake Tondano, and other consultancy jobs. He however found himself looking to do more.

“I’ve earned many dollars doing reports that get stuck in the shelf because you don’t have the people who will do it,” Eusebio said.

Pilot project in Lumban

Returning to the Philippines upon the prodding of La Salle Br. Armin Luistro FSC, the man found the people he needed in the barangays (villages) of Lumban town in Laguna province.

Lumban’s 16 barangays are the pilot project sites for LIFE’s adopted watershed. Building on its brick-by-brick concept of environmental preservation, LIFE chose one of the 24 sub-basins - the Lumban-Pagsanjan sub-basin.

LIFE has trained the barangay leaders of Lumban to profile their barangays. With a compass, a line meter and sometimes a global positioning system (GPS) device, the officials, housewives and fishermen surveyed their areas for the barangay profile map.

The maps will be used for the natural resource management plan and help the barangay leaders identify and address the causes of frequent problems in the community.

The profile maps show the fish pens, hand pumps, houses, plantations, rice fields, piggeries, churches and other landmarks in the barangay.

“This is the thrust of LIFE: To bring education to the barangays, to people who may never have entered a classroom but who know life all too well,” Eusebio said.

“The satisfaction is in seeing people who know nothing of what you do, holding them by the hand and seeing them become experts,” he said.

The camps had various environmental activities such as hiking, camping, bird-watching, and stargazing. The participants were divided into various teams that proposed various environmental initiatives for their institutions. Environmental education and advocacy was an important aspect of the programs.

The Luzon group, for instance, presented their plans for each of the participant institution. Solid-waste management plans and wastewater treatment facilities were examples of proposed projects. The Visayas chapter proposed a campaign for proper segregation (e.g. orientation, symposium, discipline and publicity).

Coordination with the various schools’ administration will be done to with set rules and penalties for the violators. The Mindanao chapter had prepared signing “BOTO PARA SA INANG BAYAN” - A Signature Campaign against Forest Destruction.”

The Eco-Camp is a project of the Federation of Lasallian Institutions (FLI) and the Lasallian Institute for the Environment (LIFE).