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This is to invite all Ormocanons and Taclobanons including its family and friends to join us in a fellowship to celebrate the fiesta of the cities of Ormoc and Tacloban. The fellowship is in honour of the patron saint of Ormoc - Sts. Peter and Paul and Tacloban - Santo Nino de Tacloban.

EVESTCCO (also known as Eastern Visayas Australia) (www.evestcco.org) and Visayan Association of Australia Inc. (VAA Inc) (www.vaa.evestcco.org) is the convenor of this event.

See you all at the fiesta fellowship.

Philippine cinema “Star For All Seasons”, MISS VILMA SANTOS, will be this year’s guest of honour at the Philippine National Day Ball (PND) on 8 June 2008 at the Grand Ballroom, Hilton Hotel Sydney.

Ate Vi, as she is fondly called by her fans and Vi to the Philippine movie industry movers and shakers, is currently the first woman Governor of Batangas Province, Philippines. She was previously the first woman mayor of Lipa City.

In 1998, she entered politics and ran for mayor of Lipa City, Batangas where she won by landslide victories in three consecutive elections. As the first woman mayor of Lipa City, she helped bring not just economic progress and infrastructure development to Lipa City, but more notably her various programs on public health, education and environment, which again earned various local and international awards and recognitions.

A ten-hectare nipa plantation will soon rise at the two barangays of Ormoc City in the province of Leyte, thanks to the funding support coming from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

The project will be implemented by the people's organization called Naungan-San Juan Mangrove Planters Association organized through the Community Based Forest Management Program of the DENR, Ms. MG Sugcang, Information Officer of DENR reported.

DENR Regional Executive Director Alfredo Pascual said that the establishment of a nipa plantation in the barangays of Naungan and San Juan aims to bring back the ecological stability of the mangrove resources as the site is the habitat and breeding area of diverse marine flora and faunal species.

Director Pascual added that the Nipa Plantation Project is expected to bring about not only environmental benefit but also economic benefits to the members of the implementing People's Organization and the communities in Naungan and San Juan.