Most Filipinos who are winners and are to attend YES09 in Kuala Lumpur this coming November 15 cannot meet the November 6 deadline of passport detail submission.

The number of SEAChange Delegates from the Philippines, or participants, if that is how you wish to call them has already reached good 40-50. The number might be growing with the continuous interactivity fellow Filipinos in the Philippine SEAChange Community on Facebook, even though they are most already very late to make it for a free trip. It’s good to know that the summit itself doesn’t really matter to them, but what will happen after it and the change that they can provide to our country.

The Philippines has been hit a couple of times by strong typhoons, Santi, Pepeng (Parma), Ondoy (Ketsuna), just to name a few. During the time of the latter typhoon, Santi, most of us were on their way to request a new passport from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) since not all of us has one yet.

The number of Filipinos to make it to the Main Event of SEAChange for this year in Kuala Lumpur may dramatically decrease because of the November 6 deadline given to submit the details of their passports. We can’t do anything but wait until our passports arrive, which would take 15 working days for most Delegates from Mindanao and I don’t know how long for people in Visayas and Luzon.

In my case, it takes me 15 days, and I’m set to pick up scraps this coming November 9, 2009. Which you may have noticed, is already past the November 6th deadline.

Typhoons may have caused delays in distributing the passports and may have prolonged each delegates creepy feelings about getting their passports on time. There’s truly, honestly, nothing really that we can do, but hope that the organizers behind this event will give a extension about the passport details because not everyone, or should I say most of the Philippine Attendees won’t make it on time.