Pasay community trains members on solid waste management
by Gertrudes Samson
Who else can best convince people to practice solid waste management than people from their own community who practice it themselves and could prove that it is possible? TAO-Pilipinas is currently assisting the St. Hannibal Empowerment Center (SHEC) and its assisted organization in Pasay City called the St. Hannibal Christian Communities (SHaCC) on solid waste management (SWM) by training people from the community to become trainors themselves.
On April 11 to 12, 2008, the community trainors trained by TAO-Pilipinas held a two-day SWM Training Workshop at the SHEC office in E. Cornejo St., Pasay City to orient the second batch of 85 SHaCC members on the importance of solid waste management and how they could implement it in their community.
SHaCC is the second community to have undergone trainor’s training on solid waste management. The first was the Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Maralita ng Navotas (SANAGMANA), a community in a fish pond area in Tanza, Navotas. Like SHaCC, SANAGMANA community members were also trained in solid waste management. A month after the training, TAO-Pilipinas visited the workshop participants to see if they put into practice what they learned. Among those who practiced, potential speakers were selected for trainor’s training. They conducted the succeeding orientations in their community and then later served as resource speakers for the first workshop in SHaCC in Pasay in April 2007.
The successful result of the first workshop inspired SHaCC to seek the assistance of TAO-Pilipinas to help them build their own team of resource speakers, who then led the second SWM workshop in April 2008.
Creative learning
Learning can be fun and be an opportunity for team building or bonding at the same time. TAO-Pilipinas has designed the training workshop on solid waste management such that people from the community can conduct it themselves and participants of the community can easily understand it. Tagalog is the language used in the conduct of workshop since it is more familiar to people at the community level.
Aside from lectures, other types of learning methods are also incorporated such as focus group discussions. These facilitate interaction and discussion among participants. Interactive games, role plays, and group activities are also integrated to facilitate learning while having fun and encouraging team building among community members at the same time.
Due to the success of the second training workshop, SHaCC is planning to hold a third workshop among its other members in June. Additional potential speakers from previous workshops will hopefully be added then to their team of resource persons for solid waste management.
Positive impact
The community shared the positive impact of the training during an assessment meeting with TAO-Pilipinas on April 30, 2008. According to Josie Satajo, Environmental Committee President of SHaCC, the people in the community now segregate their waste unlike before when they mixed garbage together. Many of them are now composting in small containers at home, after they learned that the compost can be good organic fertilizer for their vegetable garden.
Josie also said that after the workshop, the participants still happily talk about the workshop and the fun that they had then. Upon hearing those stories, those who did not attend the training felt that they missed a lot. This shows that the participants really enjoyed the activities.
SHaCC president Nelia Reyna also added that she incorporated some of the training methodologies she learned to their other trainings on health and nutrition because she found them innovative, well focused, and very useful.
Gaining self-confidence
During the same assessment meeting, the trained resource speakers said that the trainor’s training had a big impact on them as individuals. The opportunity to speak to a large audience gave them self-confidence. This was something that they had never done before, and they were happy that the results turned out well, because their neighbors listened to them and actively participated in workshops and activities.
Bro. Thanvi T. Medalla, SHEC Program Manager for Environmental Management, affirmed that this is the first time that these leaders experienced teaching a big assembly of community members. He was happy to see the results and their transformation. Some of the housewives now have the confidence to speak, share, and train other community members on solid waste management. To him, it concretized the mission of SHEC which is to empower the poorest of the poor.
Community Feature, News Digest | rp | 15 September 2008 |
