Wednesday, 17 August

Last Wednesday (August 17) was jam-packed with activities. The day started off with a jeepney ride to the Cebu Institute of Medicine (CIM), one of our local partners. Their medical students will be collaborating with us on the creation and implementation of a health education curriculum focusing on hypertension prevention.

This particular visit, however, was for a lecture given by Dr. Berden, who talked about hypertension in detail, including definition, types, symptoms and prevention. The lecture was a nice crash course/refresher on the science behind hypertension as well as information that will be useful for our health education curriculum. Afterwards, the team also got to mingle with the CIM students, who were extremely friendly and receptive. I look forward to getting to know them in the coming weeks :)

Our time with the CIM students was cut short, as we had to grab a quick lunch before heading over to the University of the Philippines - Cebu High School (UP-Cebu HS) for a symposium on environment and health. The school had asked us to participate, so we prepared a presentation on high blood pressure. It was a very exciting experience, as there were at least two hundred UP-Cebu HS students in attendance, and they were all very enthusiastic about our presence. Although it was a challenge to convey our key messages over the cheering and talking amongst the students, the team stepped up and did an admirable job.

After the PLs debriefed the team on the symposium, we headed over to my favorite restaurant in Cebu: Chika-An! We had invited the Gawad Kalinga officials we are working with in Budlaan, but unfortunately they weren't able to make it. Sayang! (what a shame) But I know we will get to know them more as we collaborate with them to implement the health fair and other activities.

That's all for today, but I can already tell that this is going to be a very epic and fun project :) Ingat kayo (take care)!

-Andrew

Welcome to Budlaan!!

Coming from an enjoyable two day introduction to the Philippines, this day seemed to be one of the first times we started to understand what work we would be doing here. We left at 10:00 AM to take taxis in the rain to Budlaan, the Gawad Kalinga community we would be working with for our project!

When we arrived, everyone was warmly welcomed by the Gawad Kalinga members of the village, Jerdie and "Teacher Tess" haha. And going even further were the pre-school and kindergarten children of the community! There were tons of them chatting and swarming around us, even bringing our hands to their foreheads in the Filipino traditional blessing. After being introduced to all the members of the Gawad Kalinga community at the village, the children all gathered around to sing the Gawad Kalinga theme song. That must have been the cutest thing for me to have ever seen in my life. Seriously, the kids were so emotional and into the song that everyone was singing along at the chorus. They said the kids had been practicing that for a year already, so I can definitely see how big of a role Gawad Kalinga plays in the Community.

We then took a tour of the entire village of Budlaan, from the colorful, quaint homes to the mini convenience store, and into the pre-school and kindergarten school. They did mention that they did not have any sort of clinic in the village, however. Overall, I would say that the GK community at Budlaan was very warm and connected as a community, which I took to be truly inspiring considering how other Filipinos came together to help build houses and the entire village from the ground up. I had visited other Filipino GK sites in the past, but never looked into it so much to notice the thriving synergy of the community.

Next we met the members of the Sealnet club at UP Cebu for the first time, and had a great time as they showed us around the school and then played an exciting game of I'm a Ninja. The students were so happy to meet us, I couldn't wait to work with them.

Lastly, we attended a fairly in depth lecture on the history of the Philippines by Dr. Sofia Logarta. I learned a lot more than I had previously known about the Philippines by Dr. Logarta, who seemed so passionate about her work. It was definitely a joy to learn more about the history of the country my parents are from. In general, I would say that this day was definitely a bright, exciting introduction to the different people we would be working with for the coming weeks.

I'll add pictures soon! BTW This was for Tuesday August 16th