Archive for May 2014
SETTING YOUR SIGHTS FOR LUOP
Barangay Luop was formerly a sitio of
Barangay Minsulao, Siay, Zamboanga Del Sur. Diplahan, where was the barangay
falls under, was made into a Municipal on December 19, 1979 and sitio Luop was
separated from Minsulao and created as a independent Barangay. Mr. Owhang Maro,
a subanen man, gave Luop its name. Luop came from subanen word “Look” which
means a creek or a river, in her case connecting to the Sibugay river.
Barangay Luop comprises of a mixture of Bisaya and Ilonggo,
with the latter containing the majority of the residents. Majority of the
population embrace Iglesia ni Cristo as their religion. However, despite
the diversities in religion, culture and language, the residents still manage
to coexist and live harmoniously with each other.
Access to a public Day care Center, Preschool and elementary school are
available in the barangay. The secondary school that caters to the students of
Luop is located at the adjacent barngay Minsulao and the nearest tertiary level
school is found at the adjacent Munipality of Buug, which is 8 Kilometers from
the Municipality of Diplahan.
A Barangay Health Station structure is available in the barangay but
the health personnel cater to their health needs only twice a month. There were
also 6 Barangay Health Worker (BHW) in the barangay with one representative per
purok. The nearest hospital is the Wilfredo S. Palma Hospital that is located
40 kilometers away from the barangay Luop.
The Barangay’s power supply is
coming from the ZamSurECo. The water system is Level II; their main water
source came from a Large water tank that is chlorinated every 1st
week of every Saturday of the month.
Residents of
Luop especially adolescents are actively involved in sports activities
especially basketball. For this purpose,
the covered court/ basketball court is being utilizednot just for special events
but is also used for sports. Male residents especially adolescents regularly
play basketball every Saturday and the barangay officials also usually organize
basketball tournament during their barangay feast. Some female adolescents also
play volleyball and badminton as part of their leisure activities at the
covered court.
TOP 5 PROBLEMS OF BARANGAY LUOP
A thought I read recently: "Problems are part of life -- they go together with being alive. And every community has problems, too; they go together with being a community. That's just a fact of community life."
As I read this thought I cannot help but shake my head and agree. Indeed, problems are part of life and just like people, communities have problems too. Communities, like people, try to solve their problems and analyzing those problems helps in their solution.
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| Top 10 Problems identified by each Purok of Brgy. Luop |
Many problems were raised in the event, but following a close examination of the issues presented, the following top 5 problems were highlighted:
1. Inaccessible health care delivery system
The top of the list is the inaccessibility of the health care delivery system in the barangay. It is very important to know what does "inaccessibility" means in this context as this may cause confusion. A pertinent information about Brgy. Luop that could help us enlighten their perception of "inaccessiblity" is that, it is one of the few barangays in the Municipality that has been blessed with a Health Center. However, the midwife in charge of Brgy Luop also have the same responsibilities with other barangays. Thus, the main problem of the residents of Brgy. Luop is not about the absence of a health care facility but rather the absence of a mainstay health personnel that could address their health care necessities at the time they need it.
2. Lack of alternative source of livelihood
Another frequently occurring concern of the Brgy people is the need for an alternative source of livelihood. The primary source of livelihood in the barangay is farming and farmers are usually men. Thus, women are usually left at home and tend the needs of the family like performing household chores. However for most of the time, house tending ends early leaving the women, usually mothers, more free time. It is this free time that they want to make use of to be productive and help their husbands earn for the household.
3. Sanitation
Sanitation is a global problem. In fact according to World Health Organization (WHO) an estimated 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation globally. If the current trend continues, by 2015 there will be 2.7 billion people without access to basic sanitation. Brgy Luop is in no exception to this global issue. Underlying issues that add to this challenge is the poor knowledge in waste segregation and disposal as well as not implementing the Solid Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003) as mandated by the law.
4. High Incidence of Malnutrition
According to WHO, Malnutrition is a major health problem, especially in developing countries (including the Philippines). Malnutrition essentially means “bad nourishment”. It concerns not enough as well as too much food, the wrong types of food, and the body's response to a wide range of infections that result in malabsorption of nutrients or the inability to use nutrients properly to maintain health.
There are many contributory factors of malnutrition in Brgy Luop but the main cause as mentioned by the community people is poverty. It is because of poverty that people are not able to eat the right kind of food they need. Lack of money means lack of food and lack of food, more often than not, can lead to malnutrition especially for children. Another contributory factors may be the sanitation problems and lack of proper knowledge on the proper nutrition especially of children.
5. High Incidence of Hypertension
The last but not the least problem seen by the community people is the growing number of residents that are diagnosed to be hypertensive. The lack of adequate knowledge on how to prevent, manage and treat hypertension even worsen the situation. Thus the community people opted to have this problem be tackled.
Those were the problems identified by the community people. We opt ,together with all the stakeholders involved, to help the community stand against these issues and conquer them on their own. It is also important to know that true happiness comes not when we get rid of all our problems, but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice patience, learn and grow with other people all for the sake of the One who created us.PROBLEM PRIORITIZATION
After completion of
house-to-house survey, data collation, analysis and interpretation, Laom Luop group met and decided to utilize bottom-up
approach in the prioritization and ranking of the identified problem of the
community. This approach was carried out
by presenting the surveyed data to the community residents (bottom) allowing
them to identify and prioritize problems that are salient, measurable,
realistic and attainable, and this then later presented to the barangay officials (up) where they had
the final say as to which problems should be addressed according to salience
and feasibility. This method was employed to avoid hawthorne effect and
contamination of the problem selection process. Two separate assemblies were
conducted with the aim of bringing people together in order to come up with the top 10 problems of the community, rank them
according to salience, and craft a common vision for the progress and
development of the community. 
The first assembly was held on April 11, 2014 at Luop Multi-Purpose Covered Court. This was dubbed as “Community Meeting ug Salo-Salo” and attended by 120 residents. Activities conducted were registration, BP taking for adults, weighing of children 0-5 years of age, presentation of survey results, problem identification by purok, prioritization of perceived problems through ballot voting, and tallying of votes by the medical students. Intermission numbers from six (6) puroks were rendered and raffle draws and prizes were also given.
The program proper started at 1 pm and ended at 5 pm. Overall, the assembly was a success and the objectives were met. The second assembly was held on April 14, 2014 at the Barangay Hall and attended by the barangay officials. This was started by explaining the purpose of the assembly and followed by presentation of survey results, problem identification and prioritization.
The result of the problems identified by the community residents was also presented to them and compared with their identified problems, after which, they ranked which problems should be addressed first according to felt need and feasibility. At the end, 5 problems were specifically chosen and ranked and these are: Poor Access to Health Care Delivery System, Lack of Alternative Sources of Income, Improper Solid Waste Management, High Incidence of Malnutrition, and High Incidence of Hypertension. These problems will be the bases for the formulation of our Comprehensive Health Plans which we hope will be minimized or solved before we leave the place by 2016.
It is an arduous task considering the lack of time and resources
that we have but the group believes that with people’s active involvement and
commitment throughout the process, our goals will be met and sustainability
will be ensured. Both assemblies were successful and ended with a discussion on
next steps: "short, medium and long term strategies" collaboratively
decided upon by the assemblies’ participants.HOUSE TO HOUSE SURVEY
One of the first step in
community assessment is doing a house-to-house survey among the households of
Luop, Diplahan Zamboanga Sibugay. We arrived at our community on March 29,
2014, Saturday and on Monday we prepared our survey questionnaires. Immediately
on Tuesday we started to survey the households, we need to survey at least 75%
of the households in the barangay. Our questionnaire comprises queries that
would assess the living condition holistically of each household in the
barangay. It focuses on the different facets
of life such as Environmental, Economic, Social and most specially Health.
Our Barangay is composed of
162 households divided into 6 puroks. Each household is surveyed at an average time
of 30 minutes, since everybody in the group can speak and understand bisaya we managed to cover an average of
30 households per day. We just divided ourselves into 4 groups assigned to
different puroks. Initially we surveyed the farthest purok which is the purok 6
and 5 and followed by the the last 4 puroks. We have complexity in covering
100% of the households because at that time its harvest season in the barangay
and the majority of the populace spend their day time at the farm harvesting
and at the same time they are celebrating the anniversary of their barangay so
almost all the people are very busy and hard to find at their house.
At the end of the week on Friday April 4 we hit the 132nd
household and that is 80% of the entire households in the barangay. Since this
number of households already represents the entire Barangay, we use the
weekends collating the data for us to analyze the results of our 4-day survey.
We appreciate every little bit of the time that the community people has
offered us, despite of their busy schedule they still gave us a warm welcome in
their humble home. And this made as reached our goal.
LAOM LUOP: AN INTRODUCTION
Simple living, breath taking view, fresh air, and where people will welcome you warmly; there’s no other place to be but in our lovely community where we call our second home. Zamboanga Sibugay is subdivided into 16 municipalities and one of the municipalities is Diplahan.
As a medical student of the Ateneo de Zamboanga University, we are being exposed and assigned to a particular community. We are to bring change as well as do health education. We also in turn learn a lot from our exposure.
Our community is
more or less sixteen kilometres away from the highway. We are assigned at
Barangay Luop, Diplahan, Zamboanga Sibugay. The main source of livelihood is
farming since its land area is surrounded by a large area of rice fields. Our
community is not as remote as what we expected. Actually, they are quite
progressive and capable on their own if it’s not for the flood that they often
experience every now and then. They have mini grocery stores, vendors of fresh
fish coming in from nearby barangay, the residents have many fruit trees and
they also have gardens of vegetables such as eggplants and string beans. The
houses are built not far from each other; they are mostly made up of mixed
materials while some houses are made up of light materials. They have 1
elementary school, a Health Center and a day care center. The roads going to
our barangay is paved and concrete except for some areas prior to reaching our
barangay.
Barangay Luop is
made up of six puroks. Barangay Luop is situated 40 kilometers away
from the provincial capitol. It has 6 puroks and bounded by Barangay Pilar at
the North; Barangay Minsulao at the East; Barangay Boyugan at the West and
Barangay Baligasan at the South boundary.The people
of our community are peace loving, hospitable and hardworking. To sum it all
up, out community is a wonderful place.
