Center Celebrates 44 Years via Anniversary Webinars

In his remarks on March 31 during the commemoration of SDRC’s 44^th anniversary, Director Melvin Jabar described the life of the Center community as one of “consuming data for more than four decades, not only for breakfast but also for lunch, snacks and dinner.”

Hewing more closely to reality than exaggeration, the team nevertheless celebrated the event with much enthusiasm, gathering in its lab space in the Richard L. Lee Technology Block at the DLSU Laguna Campus for a remote broadcast of four scheduled anniversary webinars. Based on recent and ongoing projects at the Center, the four presentations were “Empowerment Modified Feminist Self-Defense: Violence Against Women in Transit in Metro Manila” by co-investigator Rosallia Domingo; “Ethical Technology Assessment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) among GEN Z Population in the Asia Pacific Region: Qualitative Results of the Philippine Case” by investigators Dr. Jabar and Dr. Ma. Elena Chiong-Javier; “Towards Fair Labor Conditions in the Philippine Platform Economy” by principal investigator Dr. Cheryll Ruth Soriano, co-investgator Virgel Binghay, and research assistant Margreta Lanzador-Medina; and “Katawag Project: Co-creating Solutions for Mental Health and Well-being at Work” by principal investigator Dr. Maria Guadalupe C. Salanga, team member Dr. Niño Jose Mateo, and project manager Charisse Tan.

The “Empowerment Modified Feminist Self-Defense” study, as explained by Ms. Domingo, was motivated by the situation of transport systems in Metro Manila being dangerous and unsafe for women, and by the UN SDGs promoting safety and inclusiveness in transport systems to track sustainable progress.  The study has come up with a wish list for the Metro Manila transit system that includes adequate transit and security infrastructure, technology-driven applications, access to information, and immediate response from authorities. The discussion with participants that followed the presentation involved the issue of women being allowed to bring defense weapons to schools and malls, and the role that engineers can play in making transport infrastructure and facilities safer for women.

Speaking on the “Ethical Technology Assessment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) among GEN Z Population,” Dr. Jabar demonstrated the convenience of AI use by prompting it to deliver his power point presentation, which became entertaining as the AI essentially described itself, its functions, how it is used in gadgets, its benefits, and even its negative impacts. Participants were interested in the research team’s view of the use of ChatGPT and the danger of its being relied on by students in submitting coursework (to which the team pointed out the responsibility of both teachers and students to be well informed before embarking on AI use); whether AI will become smarter than humans; and whether its’ use should be strictly regulated.

The “Towards Fair Labor Conditions in the Philippine Platform Economy” study focused on how workers perform ride-hailing and food delivery/courier/logistics services in the light of the five principles of Fairwork—fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation. Viewers were interested in whether there were existing studies that profiled platform workers in the country, but while this was beyond the scope of the Fairwork study, Dr. Soriano did share the team’s findings on the situations in which platform workers performed their jobs, particularly during the pandemic: Platform work shifted from being augmentative to a main source of livelihood; workers were exposed to greater risks with limited guarantees for social protection; they were unpaid for labor time (e.g. waiting, training, and travel time); and they became more economically vulnerable (being forced to invest and pay for the vehicles they used for their jobs).

“Katawag Project: Co-creating Solutions for Mental Health and Well-being at Work” sought to develop a systems-informed workplace intervention to promote mental health and reduce HIV risk among call center workers (agents, team leaders and managers) in the Philippines, with data gathered through a participatory systems mapping.  Webinar viewers asked about work-life balance in relation to stress, which the Dr. Mateo acknowledged was an important issue to the study’s participants. In the course of the study it was determined that work-life balance was connected to sleep in that there were fewer opportunities to engage in daily life events, and there was likewise an impact on personal relationships due to call center workers’ sleeping schedules, thus contributing to stress.

A maximum of 200 viewers were able to participate in the webinars, which were conducted in the light of this year’s theme, “Delivering Good News to the World through Research: Proactively Building Initiatives for Social Development.”