





Jude of the Jud Morning Show



| |
“Nothing shapes your life than the commitments you choose to make. They can develop you or destroy you, but either way they will define you.”
–Rick Warren
Aside from the fact that both of them live in Dauin, Negros Oriental, Alicia Tenido and Virginia Alido don’t share much in common.
Tenido, 48, is a couple peer educator (CPE), while Alido, 34, is a Bantay Dagat tanod (sea guard).
While Tenido routinely performs the task of a CPE in a largely women’s domain, Alido is the only female in the eight-member Bantay Dagat team of Poblacion District 1 Dauin United Fishermen’s Association (Poddufa).
Tenido deals primarily with housewives in humble homes within her purok (sub-village) in Bulac, while Alido scans the seawaters in the nine-hectare marine sanctuary in Sitio Lupa, Poblacion I with male counterparts.
“Most of the time we talk to the wives first because men are more difficult to convince,” Tenido said in Cebuano when asked about her strategy in winning converts to population management concepts.
Alido, who is accredited by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi), said female divers visiting the Lupa marine reserve would often request her services.
Common passion
Divergent as their tasks may seem, both women are brought together by a common passion for advocacy that integrates population, health and environment (PHE) espoused by Path Foundation Philippines, a nonstock, nonprofit organization.
Both were interviewed along with other community volunteers working closely with Path Foundation during an on-site visit conducted by media persons and information officers as part of a training workshop on the PHE approach organized by the NGO in Dumaguete City on March 22-23.
A barangay health worker since 1984, Tenido was introduced to population management advocacy through seminars where she realized the urgency of family planning, especially among the poor.
With five children to feed, largely from the earnings of her husband who alternates between farming and fishing, Tenido speaks from experience when she interacts with women in the purok.
“It is difficult to rear many children,” she explained. It is difficult to imagine anyone among the poor housewives she visits regularly who would argue with her on that.
A fisherman’s daughter, Alido grew up seeing fishing boats docking on the shores of Lupa, the site of the marine reserve.
After completing seminars on coastal resource management, she realized that unless the village acted fast, time would come when the fish on which most of the villagers subsisted would disappear forever.
Things turned for the better in 1996 when the village declared the waters off Lupa a protected area. Instead of serving as a docking area where fishermen unload their trash and gasoline waste, the marine reserve has become a favorite dive spot—a source of livelihood for the Poddufa members and their families.
Alido credits Dauin Mayor Rodrigo Alanano for the turnaround.
“Since the assumption of Mayor Alanano, no one docks here anymore,” she said.
That means no more trash and gasoline spills in the sea and rows of stores along the shore. In its place is a well-guarded sanctuary where corals abound and a vigilant citizenry keeps watch 24 hours a day.
“When we see a boat that is stationary, we immediately send out the tanod to order them to move on,” Alido said.
On a good month, the village earns as much as P50,000 from fees collected from divers who marvel at the corals and other marine life in the sanctuary. Out of this income, 40 percent goes to the Poddufa, 40 percent to the municipal government, and the remainder to the barangay.
Tenido receives a P300 monthly honorarium for her efforts, while Alido is entitled to a P250 monthly honorarium, aside from earnings derived from the barangay’s 20 percent share in the divers’ fees.
Fulfillment
Like most advocates, both prefer to talk about the fulfillment they get from doing something for the village than the monetary considerations. For the moment, both appear contented with the modest progress that their advocacies are enjoying.
Both, however, admit that managing the population is a crucial factor that will determine the survival of future generations in their respective villages.
“It will be more difficult if there are more people,” Tenido said without hesitation.
With more people fishing just outside the protected area, the catch will diminish, Alido said.
Both not only realize the immensity of the problem posed by the population growth but also the crucial role that they play as stakeholders working for NGOs such as Path.
In all probability, they have not heard of Rick Warren, but like what he said, the lives of these two women and others like them are being shaped by the commitments they have chosen to make in their areas of responsibilities.
DAUIN, Negros Oriental -- In the daytime, Emma Dinigado’s sari-sari store sells candies, cigarettes, soap and sachets of shampoo. At night, it remains open and sells other stuff.
A typical nighttime customer, usually a woman, knocks on the back door, hands over P2.50 and whispers: “Papalita ko’g medyas (I want to buy socks).”
Emma hands her a condom.
The store in Poblacion District 3 in this town doesn’t even have a name. Emma, the owner, is a barangay (village) health worker and sees her role as a retailer of contraceptives as a way of helping her poor community.
She has other contraceptives, too, and these are prominently listed outside her store, along with their respective prices.
“It’s important to keep families small because it’s difficult to raise a big family these days,” Emma told journalists who visited her store last week.
Her store is one of the 63 community-based distributor (CBD) outlets for contraceptives spread throughout nine coastal barangays of Dauin. The stores have blossomed since the municipal government supported the Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management Initiative (Ipopcorm).
Feeding the population
Mayor Rodrigo Alanano embraced the program after noting how the town’s fast-growing population had taken a toll on its natural resources. He was committed to managing family size in the community to ensure sustainability in the long haul.
Alanano said he decided to adopt the program after he noticed that the size of families along the coastal barangays -- an average of six people per household -- was bigger than those of families living in other areas.
Also, families living along the coast had a growth rate of 7-8 percent, in contrast to the 2.4 percent for the rest of the country, and the 2.1 percent for the province.
“This has largely contributed to overfishing as a means of livelihood and food source which needed to be addressed to prevent further damage to the marine resources,” Alanano explained.
Family planning
He said that through this integrated population and coastal resource management program, the quality of life of families in the coastal communities had improved. And with less pressure on the coastal ecosystem, the people have been assured of food security.
The mayor then enlisted volunteers from the youth and married couples. They were trained by Ipopcorm, the Silliman University Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management and the Marina Clinic of the Silliman Medical Center Foundation Inc. to help educate their peers on the advantages of population and coastal resource management.
“I was also aware of the huge influence of the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a member. So I told my parish priest, ‘Father, we both have the same constituents and we cannot be fighting. Please take care of their spirit. I’ll take care of their body and their basic needs,’” Alanano recalled.
Few people, more fish
To date, the population thrust of the local government unit has been proceeding smoothly.
Since the Ipopcorm program was introduced in 2002, the population in the nine coastal barangays, based on an actual head count of residents, dropped to negative .25 percent in 2005. There were, however, no immediate figures on the actual number of childbirths in the three-year period.
Marine sanctuary
Dauin also established a marine sanctuary to allow fish and other marine resources to breed and grow in order to replenish the depleted fish stocks of the town.
Fishermen had complained that their fish catch was getting smaller and smaller, and they had to paddle farther from shore just to be able to catch enough for their families’ daily needs. Barely two years after the establishment of the marine sanctuary, the fishermen reported increased harvests.
Narciso Romero, chair of the Dauin Bantay Dagat Association, said that after three hours of fishing, they could now get two to three kilos of fish, compared to the half-kilo they used to get before the sanctuary was set up.
Dauin’s program to manage the environment and population had also earned for itself the Gawad Galing Pook award last year in Malacañang. Alanano said this award would inspire them to continue to do more for their town.
1 comment:
bilib ako s ako silingan na si Nardo Alama or Alamas family,maayo muhimo ug balay siya ang naghimo sa balay namo,sundang,ug bisag unsa nga klase n gitara,SIKAT SA RONDALLA SA TIBOOK KALIBUTAN ug ang iyang asawa na si meding nindot pod mukanta kauban namo sa CCFC saona.dugay na ako wala p nakauli diha sa tugawe,pero bisan unsag ka dugay na naa pa gihapon sa yuta nga akong gitawhan,dako kaayo ko pasalamat kay Mayor Rodrigo Alanano.karon ug unya ang Dauin naimprove na,maraming salamat Mayor,God BLess
Post a Comment