PHL urged to involve youth, persons with disabilities in climate plans

CEBU CITY–Building climate resilience in Philippine communities can rely on a largely untapped resource yet: the youth, including persons with disabilities (PWDs).

When Haiyan hit central Philippines in 2013, a group of Cebuano youth, including those who are mute or deaf, banded together to assist the local government in packaging food and other relief goods to the different barangays in the area.

Among them is Renato Eliot, now 15, who together with his classmates volunteered at least 14 hours daily during the first weeks  after Haiyan. Like other affected communities, classes were suspended in the island due to damaged classrooms, with some used as temporary relief centers then.

“My classmates and I thought that we better use our time off school to help the community. We know that we are all affected by Haiyan but I think the best way for us is to help so we can also move on,” says Eliot during an interview.

Eliot is one of Filipino youth aged under 25, which comprise 54 percent of the total Philippine population.

The country ranks as the 12th most populous nation worldwide when its population hit 100 million in July 2014, according to UN Population Fund.

Eliot adds that the act of sorting noodle packets, scooping rice from sacks into three-kilo bags, and packaging them all together seem to add a semblance of regularity to their daily life. It helped that his classmates and friends from school are also in the makeshift relief center just across the municipal outpost, where donors and humanitarian groups register upon disembarking the roll-on, roll-off ships from the mainland.

Eliot was among the youth who welcomed another group of young volunteers, who communicated mainly via Filipino sign language. The group has travelled from the mainland and brought a truck-full of relief goods mainly consisting of a package that can help a family of five tide over for four to five days.

Lesson from Cebu

Leading the group is JP Maunes, a deaf-mute advocate and founder of internationally awarded Gualandi Volunteer Service Programme (GVSP), which promotes equal rights and opportunities for deaf individuals and PWDs, including access to voter’s registration and polling precincts during the past presidential elections.

“PWDs are one of the vulnerable sectors in our society and have marginal or limited access to most resources and opportunities. During times of calamities, this is carried over because PWDs have limited mobility or even limited ways to communicate their need because not many people are familiar with sign language, for example,” notes Maunes, who is also an advocate of promoting the widespread use of Filipino sign language.

During the relief operations, GVSP was able to locate a blind couple and their 6-year-old kid about to enter kinder. The family’s house made of wood and light materials was run aground by strong winds, and their vegetable crops at the backyard farm were all destroyed. Then, the family has been living off from donated food from their neighbors.

This is the reason why Maunes and his group specifically prepared to visit and deliver the relief goods to the houses of PWDs, who had very limited chance of getting the first wave of relief goods from trucks as representatives of other families lined up outside the main roads. For example, PWDs will need extra assistance from other individuals and energy to line up in the heat of the day to get rations, energy they can conserve during times of calamity with limited food access.

According to Maunes, planning is essential in the execution of relief projects for PWDs because they have to know the names and addresses of the PWDs and their families in disaster-hit areas. A network and coordination with PWD advocates in the area made it possible for the team to distribute the goods to all PWD beneficiaries in a day and return to the mainland late evening of the same day.

His group did weekly regular relief operations for the first two to three months post-Haiyan and also provided post-traumatic stress debriefings to families in the area and building shelter through partners such as Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI) and Islamic-Relief USA.

“I am proud of our PWD youth volunteers because they are able to show that age or being differently abled is not a hindrance to help others. In fact, they are in a good position to help because they have better understanding of their peers,” notes Maunes.

For him, the project was able to rally volunteers among his organization and provide them a sense of fulfilment and empowerment for both youth and PWD volunteers.

“I hope there will be more opportunities for the youth and even PWDs to show that they can help communities, not only after a disaster but be regarded as partners as well,” notes Maunes.

Volunteerism was also clearly seen in Tacloban when youth members of the Catholic church went to help out in disbursing relief goods and providing counselling to victims weeks after the devastation.

New hope

In Mindanao, an elected policy maker with strong youth leadership roots has started tapping the youth in his community as partners for disaster risk resilience.

Johnny Paul Lagura, Councilor and Chairman of the Committee on Education, DRRM, Tourism, and ICT, Kapatagan City in Lanao Del Norte, says that local government units, especially those that are vulnerable to natural hazards should involve a participatory and multi-stakeholder approach in building climate resilience communities.

This can be done through the issuance of community memos to schools to encourage student volunteers to help raise awareness on disaster reduction, among other government initiatives.

“The strategy is a win-win for both the school because the students are able to churn in hours of extension work in their community through their classroom projects, and the community and local government unit benefit from this collaboration,” notes Lagura.

The local government unit can be a good partner of educators by implementing policies and ordinances that foster deep learning skills and community immersions for students, and even issuing simple reminders to parents to take some time to visit their kids at school, Lagura notes.

In another interview, Renato Solidum, director of DOST Phivolcs and professor on disaster risk resilience notes that multi-stakeholder preparation is key to a building climate resilience communities.

Solidum was among experts who trained over 1,000 first responders in all 17 regions of the Philippines under DOST’s Science for Safer Communities program.

According to him, the science of disaster risk reduction and management is simple: equip the communities with awareness and skills about how to prepare for disasters by clearly understanding the dangers present to them and how to respond to it before, during and after.

Fast forward to today, Eliot is now attending school again and is one of the island’s youth volunteers for building community resilience in Bantayan Island.

“Who knows when the next big storm might come? We need to be better prepared,” Eliot said.

 

text and photos by Anna Valmero