The Visayas Primary Healthcare Services is currently implementing a project for survivors of Typhoon Yolanda in four barangays in Cebu.The 15-month project, “Community – Led Disaster Preparedness and Resiliency: Grassroots’ Alternative in the Face of Climate Change,” is implemented in Barangays Tindog and Dalingding Sur, Municipality of Medellin, Barangays Paypay and Dalingding Norte, Municipality of Daanbantayan. The project proponent is the Philippine Network of Food Security Programmes, Inc. (PNFSP). It is funded by the Terre des Hommes International Federation (TDH).
Aside from the four Cebu barangays, the said project is also implemented in four barangays in the municipality of Burauen in the province of Leyte which also suffered gravely from Typhoon Yolanda.
Together with the VPHCS as co-implementors are the Eastern Visayas Rural Assistance Program (EVRAP) based in Palo, Leyte, the Women’s Resource Center of the Visayas (WRCV) based in Cebu City, and the Advocates for Community Health Inc. (ACH) based in Manila.
The project aims to ensure that the eight barangays have fully recovered from the main impacts of the typhoon, restored their livelihood and established safety and disaster prevention, response and recovery mechanisms and achieved their basic rights to food for their children and families through livelihood assistance and food security alternatives.
Specifically in the four Cebu barangays, the VPHCS shall conduct psychosocial sessions for selected adults and children with unresolved trauma so that they can regain their usual work routine and pre-disaster psychological disposition.
The VPHCS shall also conduct trainings for local health workers in the four barangays on health disaster preparedness and mental health, and trainings on psychosocial processing facilitation so that they will be equipped to facilitate basic psycho-social processing for adults and children and undertake community activities on health disaster preparedness, especially on awareness -raising on the health effects of disasters and activities to build individual and collective coping strategies.
These four barangays have established people’s organizations which were organized by the WRCV as an offshoot of the relief efforts immediately after the typhoon.
