My heart beats with competition. I don’t know where to look when people say that participation is more important than winning.

I leave that part of parenting of my children to my husband. My voice is loud and convincing when I sing the song The winner takes it all of Abba. Therefore, I just had to give it a second thought when I saw the 2019 SEA GAMES slogan in the Philippines being ‘WE WIN AS ONE’. What does that mean?

Meanwhile, I was on my mission in the Philippines promoting inter-local government cooperation between Local Government Units: cities, municipalities, provinces etc. for the purpose of improved solid waste management. Thinking it over, I can only embrace this slogan of we win as one, because when cooperating you do. You combine strengths to together beat.. well in this case a lack of capacity and the immense social, economic and environmental disasters especially vulnerable people are facing in their daily lives. 

No one is winning now, and we can be the winning team. Ok, seeing it as a team sport, it was extra great this time that I had a chance to meet the League of Municipalities together with the League of Cities and to discover the existence of their umbrella Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines, or league of leagues as they say. All Local Government Units needed to join forces to better implement the Manila Bay Sustainable Development Master Plan. And coming back to the SEA GAMES, where I was able to listen to the speaker of the house: it took the Philippines only 27 months to implement the Master Plan of this major event. Can it be done with the Manila Bay Master Plan as well? Let’s win as one.

Irene Oostveen