Ep. 361: Barangay and SK Elections

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 361, the Barangay and the SK. So this was originally planned as an update about elections that were happening in October, and I decided not to do that because, well, I'm late. And also, there's more to this than just elections. So in October, the Philippines held elections for the barangay and their sk. Now I'm going to explain what the SK is, but first I'm going to explain what a barangay is. So a barangay is like the neighborhood where people live. So now, last October, they had elections for local leaders. This was not a national election, although it was a national election day. It was a local election. In addition to barangay leaders, they were also electing SK leaders. Now, the sk, the Sangunian Kabatan, they shortened it to sky, is a Youth Government. So I'm just going to let Julia explain this because we don't have this, but Filipino teenagers who are registered to vote get to vote for their SK leaders, which I actually think is a really great way to get people involved in their local politics, willing to vote, feeling like they have a say and a voice. So here's what Julia says. A big portion of the Philippine population is comprised of the youth. 52% of Filipinos are 24 years old or younger. To encourage them to engage in politics, a local youth council was established in 1975 to give young people a say in local government. The youth elects a Sangunian Kabatan SK representative, which is the equivalent to that of a barangay. I'm not sure what the word she's using, but it's the barangay captain. These representatives are paid and have the same duties and responsibilities as their local legislature. The only difference is that they will also become members of the National Youth Commission, where the representatives vote for a president to address youth issues on a nationwide scale. To be eligible to run as a youth representative, you must be a registered SK voter between the ages of 18 to 24. Given their age, it's expected that these youth representatives would be college age students. So if someone wants to go into politics as a career, running as an SK representative would be their first step. Who votes for the SK representative? In the Philippines, you can register to vote for the SK elections when you turn 15. You'll be eligible to vote in the regular and SK elections when you turn 18, but once you turn 30, you'll only vote in regular elections. So now let me just give a little bit more about this sk, I think it's really kind of a cool concept. So they've made some changes to this since 1975. The first one was their age expansion. They expanded up to 24 years old. And they required that the people elected be 18 to 24. They've tried to make this SK an actual entity so people have responsibility and. And they have the ability to sign contracts. And then they gave them a budget. So they've said the law says that a barangay must dedicate 10% of their general budget fund to the SK and that money must be spent on youth development. So that's a really big amount of money that's dedicated to the youth and to this sub political group that's actually real. And then last, they require that elected officials in the SK go through a bunch of training. You have to go through the training before you can start your term in office. It's really kind of a cool way to start politics. People can start voting when they're 15. They vote. They vote for SK people. I'm not exactly sure if they vote up until 24 or 30, but once they're 30 and above, they stop voting for the young, the young candidates. So thank you so much, Julia, for explaining this to us. Really cool concept and a really great way for someone interested in politics to get into it when they're young.