"The future is here"
The Preparation
During our community medicine lectures, we were taught that community participation is just part of the equation on achieving that so-called, CHANGE.
Even before starting with our house to house survey, we already knew that we were to conduct an assembly and present the data gathered. We all knew that all those trekking were done for this.
After all the interviews made, we began the tallying. If the house to house was daunting physically, tallying was on a different level. Even before we were informed of the digitalized questionnaire, we already began with the manual tallying. It took us weeks of sleepless nights and endless counting. Purok by purok, question by question, every household counts. After the tallying, came the preparation of the assembly itself. We did graphs to present data, presentation and program. We also informed the barangay council of the plans for the community assembly.
D-Day
The day of the assembly has arrived, people from the different puroks, from the farthest to the nearest, came. Hundreds attended for the sole reason of wanting to get involved in the community. At first we were having a rough start due to the influx of people, but later on we finally got into the rhythm of it.
The people were seated by purok and were eager to listen to the results of our house to house survey. Doxology and the singing of the national anthem were followed by the barangay captain, Hon. Pelagio Trinidad’s opening remarks. It was then followed by the assembly proper, category by category, we presented graphs, the people were attentive all through out and they were giving feedbacks.
After presenting the graphs, we asked the people by purok to identify 3 problems and rank them. Similar words came out like, roads, waste disposal, water and the lack of health station. Purok leaders were presenting to the assembly their top 3 problems and were justifying their choices based on their experiences as if they were trying to convince everybody of the choices they made. This made people see what was happening specially to the farthest puroks. We also showed them our top 10 problems based on the data gathered and the ranking made. Our results from theirs were similar.
“ Importante jud na naa tay health station diri sa barangay Camul.”
“ kadaghan tay mga basura sa barangay, kung mapahimoslan lang ning mga basura”
The assembly ended with Hon. Pelagio’s feedback on the problems identified by the people of the community and did some explanations and introduced some future projects of his administration.
Overall
The overall experience was enlightening not just on the part of the people but also on our part. It made us realize the importance of “#bayanihan”, of #unity in order to achieve progress.