The Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO conducted and facilitated the two-day training on website management at La Breza Hotel in Quezon City from 10 to 11 September 2018.

The training was attended by 18 participants from the following BaLinkBayan local government units (LGU) partners of CFO:

  1. Batangas Province
  2. Camarines Norte Province, Bicol
  3. Dagupan City, Pangasinan
  4. Guinobatan Municipality, Albay
  5. Los Baños Municipality, Laguna
  6. Pangasinan Province
  7. Quezon City
  8. Rosales Municipality, Pangasinan
  9. Urdaneta City, Pangasinan

The training started off with Dir. Marie Apattad’s orientation of BaLinkBayan and the importance of the project to their localities.

Guided with the user’s manual on WordPress provided by the CFO, two attendees from each LGU were trained on how to manage and administer their own localized BaLinkBayan websites. The first part of the training, conducted by Mr. Romeo Rosas II, focused on site management that included topics on WordPress, government website template, dashboard menu and website back-up. The following day, the training headed by Ms. Alyssa Jeanne Gozo was concentrated on content management where the participants learned how to create pages, add images and publish posts. In between discussions, hands-on activities were done, enabling participants to practice their learnings and apply the topics to their own BaLinkBayan localized websites.

CFO Undersecretary Astravel Pimentel-Naik gave the closing remarks at the end of the training. She emphasized the need for an online portal where overseas Filipinos can see their local government’s programs and avail of their services. Usec. Naik also hoped that the training will be able to help them develop fully their own BaLinkBayan localized websites.

Participants were then awarded with certificates of participation and were given BaLinkBayan IEC materials like planners, notebooks, bagtags ang eco-bags.