Community Service

My name is Marycel Cañete, and I am a first year nursing student at St. Augustine School of Nursing in Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines.   The purpose of this blog is not to document the daily life of a nursing student but instead to highlight extraordinary events that serve as part of our education and experience.  

Part of our education is the National Service Training Program (NSTP).  The goal of this government-mandated program is to instill a sense of civic awareness, ethics and community responsibility.  As part of this program, the class was asked to come up with a community service event; seeing it through from development to execution. 

Ready to go!

I was voted to be Project Leader by my classmates.  Our project was to provide some health education to poor or needy children.  Since some of these children have very little, we needed to provide some take-aways to help encourage them to practice what we preach.  Twenty students participated in this project.  For a budget, all students agreed to contribute 250 pesos (about $6 USD), giving us 5,000p to spend (around $125 USD).  My boyfriend pledged a matching amount, giving us a total of 10,000p to work with. Additionally, one of my classmates, Sydney, provided combs for the children.

I approached the Hon. Susana Fabilia, Barangay Captain of Barangay Campetic, Palo, Leyte.  Barangay translates as “village,” although it also commonly represents something similar to a city ward, with a barangay captain equivalent to an alderman.  Ms. Fabilia not only provided approval for our event, but she also arranged to have 50 children, aged 3-4 years old attend.  The date was set at Saturday, September 18, 2010 at the barangay community hall.

I divided the project team in to three groups.  One group was responsible for marketing, decorations, and gifts.  The second group was responsible for food and drink.  The third group handled the educational part of the program, which focused on some basic functions young children could understand: the importance and process of hand-washing; basic foot care; and nail trimming.  For the benefit of the parents in attendance, we also discussed proper nutrition, although many of these children are happy just to eat anything they can get, when they can get it.  

The evening before the event, the marketing team met at my apartment to blow up balloons and wrap the gift packs, which included a comb, a bar of soap, a pencil, a box of crayons, and a coloring book.  Additionally, we had brightly colored sandals for all of the children.  The morning of the event, Sydney’s fiancé, Levi, drove us and all of the packages to the community hall in his van.  Meanwhile, food was ordered from a local restaurant, and drinks were purchased from a grocery store.

Of the 50 children expected, about 45 actually came to the event, some with parents, and some without.  Many were barefoot or wore torn clothes.  After an opening prayer (which the well-behaved children did surprisingly well!), we began with a story-telling session, reading them Cinderella.  Next we played a game where the children popped balloons, each containing a piece of candy.  This scared some of the kids, perhaps that is an event better suited to older children.   

Next it was time for the instructional part of our program.  First we talked about proper foot care, and discussed some of the dangers of walking barefoot.  We then provided the kids with sandals – some replacing old, worn shoes, others replacing their bare, naked feet.  Then we taught them proper hand washing techniques, and trimmed their nails.  After a brief talk about nutrition, we served a lunch of spaghetti with a fruit drink.  Many of the kids were happy just to have a meal and some we had to help feed – they did not even know how to use a fork!  Finally, we handed out the gift packs to all of the kids.  

It was a very rewarding experience for all of us.  The smiles on the kids’ faces were infectious, and we all felt good about what we accomplished.  We learned we could impact a lot of lives for very little money and effort; and I think that was the most important lesson from this exercise.   As the Project Leader, I can say the event was successful but I’ve also learned a few things for next time.  Having a checklist during the preparation was invaluable; we arrived very organized and prepared.  However, once there, many of the students were unclear regarding their role and responsibility.  This could have been handled better – planning must account for all parts of the process through to the end, and the Project Leader cannot assume that team members will automatically know what their responsibilities are.  The project had very tight time and budget constraints.  With more time, perhaps we could have increased donations, particularly from local establishments where we could have provided better nutritional food for the children.  Now might not be a bad time to investigate such resources; in return we could provide advertising at the event, as well as a mention in this blog for the world to see!  

I am very interested to hear feedback – either on the story above, or any questions I might be able to answer regarding nursing education the Philippines.   Thank you for reading!   MTC 10/4/10

We took a lot of pictures.  Want to see more?  Check out the web albums at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/zelcanete/FirstDayOfPreparation#

http://picasaweb.google.com/zelcanete/PreparationForCommunityService#

http://picasaweb.google.com/zelcanete/Other#