A focus group discussion – post training monitoring was held for youth leaders of Tabuelan on January 14, 2021 at the Tabuelan vice-mayor’s office. Eight youth members from the Tabuelan Youth Coordinating Council (TPYCC) and the Sangguniang Kabataan attended the activity.
As a background, the youth play an essential role together with the BHERTs, barangay health workers, barangay nutrition scholars and other sectors in community-based COVID-19 response. A training for youth leaders was conducted last November 5, 2020 on hgiene care and hygiene promotion. It is very important in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic so that increased awareness of the youth leaders on it can pave way for more active involvement of the youth sector in community-based COVID-19 response in their communities. Since the training, they were expected to apply what they had learned during the training and it was important to evaluate how they had done so.
The youth leaders belonging to the Sangguniang Kabataan Federation said that they had an online contest on the best method of promotion of environmental sanitation. The SK member in each barangay would clean up their respective sitios and upload videos of their work in their facebook page and share it with others. The SK council would then judge the winner. This encouraged the SK members to really promote hygiene in their barangays, which they learned during the training.
The TPYCC youth members promoted hygiene in their churches by guiding other people to practice health protocols such as social distancing, and wearing face masks. They also sanitized the pews after each mass.
Each of them said that they found the need to practice personal hygiene and cleanliness in their homes and community very important. They also actively practiced disseminating information on hygiene among their neighbors.
They also said that they would continue to promote hygiene in their communities and among their fellow youth. There was a need to reach out to more youth organizations in order to promote about hygiene, through trainings for their youth leaders and information dissemination through the social media, or public gatherings.
