MAGDALENA T. SACPA

Ms. Magdalena Sacpa of Central, Kapangan, Benguet was awarded as 1st Runner-Up Outstanding BNS during the virtual 2021 Regional Nutrition Awarding Ceremony on October 21, 2021.

Being a Barangay Nutrition Scholar for thirteen years is a rewarding learning experience for Ms. Magdalena Sacpa. She can still remember when she started to be a volunteer BNS on October 7, 2007, when she needed to undergo trainings and continuous education in order to deliver nutrition programs in the community. Some tasks were also gradually introduced to her, such as conducting Operation Timbang Plus, lectures on nutrition, orientation and IECs to constituents, home visits, monitoring and evaluation of vulnerable and primary clients, giving technical assistance to co-workers, and doing innovative programs. In implementing these works, she has to adjust her time and even sacrifice it to do work at night. She has to deal with people having different attitudes and values and even hike mountains to visit clients in far flung sitios. 

Through these challenges, she learned to develop these core values to carry out throughout her service – having Love, Interest, Sacrifice, Activeness, Serviceable, Acceptance, Coordination, Participation and Ability (LISASACPA) to succeed in whatever she is doing. She also learned to coordinate with higher officials and agencies to support the insufficient budget on nutrition as part of resource mobilization. One of the innovative     programs she initiated is “adopting a malnourished child”. This gave her an opportunity to take care of a malnourished child, giving him a home and treating him like her own. Overall, she enjoys and loves what she is doing and that is her very reward.

She expresses her gratitude to the people behind and before her – to her family for their endless support and to the Punong Barangays for their exemplary leadership and support to the Barangay Nutrition Committee. She thanks the NNC-CAR family for conducting the search for the Regional Outstanding Barangay Nutrition Scholar and their endless support to the Barangay Nutrition Scholars.

“Without their support, I wouldn’t have been awarded as outstanding BNS for 8 years in the municipal level, outstanding BNS for 3 years in the provincial level, Regional Outstanding BNS in the regional level for 3 years, and this year, the 1st runner up of the Regional Outstanding Barangay Nutrition Scholar. I am not aiming for these awards but what is important to me are the good deeds I have shared to my own community,” she said.

She would like to inspire her fellow BNS and public servants with this saying: “A simple, humble and active public servant will be granted with blessings in different ways”.