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Maribel M. Bu-ucan, 42 years old Barangay Nutrition Scholar of Poblacion East, Lamut, Ifugao. She is happily married to Mr. William P. Bu-ucan and blessed with three children. She finished Bachelor of Elementary in Education, Major in Preparatory.
BNS Bu-ucan was designated as BNS on January 1, 2014 by Barangay Captain Alexander M. Sarol. With the deepest desire to serve and to help the whole barangay specially the vulnerable groups, she considers her designation as a great opportunity to serve the community.
During her first year in service, she felt deep sympathy for the underweight and stunted preschool children in their barangay. The main reasons for malnutrition in their barangay were food insecurity and low capacity to provide their basic needs. With a kind heart, she gave her pair of duck to one of the families with severely underweight child for them to start their livelihood. She also collected scraps like bottles, plastic, cans and iron junks and gave it to the mother of an undernourished child for her to sell and buy food. Every quarter, she used part of her honorarium to buy kilos of rice and donate it to the families of underweight preschool children and to those who have border line weight.
Her hard work and sacrifices bore the sweetest fruits, because in 2015 underweight children in her barangay became normal in weight at the same time, their BNC was hailed as Best BNC Implementer in their municipality.
Maribel continued being active in the BNCs programs and activities often going an extra mile. She encouraged home and backyard gardens through the germination of seeds and distributing them to parents of preschool children, pregnant and lactating mother and families who wanted to plant various vegetables in their backyards. She also gave seeds and seedlings to Lamut Central School grade 4 to grade 6 pupils for their gulayan sa paaralan.
She is very thankful for having a supportive MNAO, BNC and a loving husband. With great passion, she envisions that their barangay will be malnutrition-free where everybody has good health and nutrition. Through her efforts and sacrifices, her barangay became the Best BNC Implementor in the Municipality of Lamut for 3 consecutive years from 2015 to 2017.
“It is of great feeling and joy to help other people even in a simple way, it is a big treasure”, she said with much gratitude.
(A Success Story of BNS Maribel Bu-ucan of Barangay Poblacion East, Lamut, Ifugao)
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The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams but in active charity and in willing service.” – Henry Longfellow
Serving others never crossed her mind especially doing it for free because her own family is also struggling financially. Thus, at first, she was hesitant to be a volunteer Barangay Nutrition Scholar. Giving service and helping others are not her priorities in life as she was already juggling too many things being a mother and a father to her children. Her husband is working as a jeepney driver at La Trinidad which is three hours away from their home.
She only see her purpose in life as someone who does the endless household chores, who guides and takes good care of her children. Moreover, considering the long distances needed to hike to do the required work of being a BNS was an absurd and impractical thing.
With a sudden change of heart, in 2007, her bittersweet journey as a volunteer Barangay Nutrition Scholar started. As she felt the need of her barangay for a BNS, she accepted the duty.
It was a rough start, the long hours of hiking, the length of doing the OPT and the struggling children afraid to be weighed which made her job more exhausting that she wanted to give up.
Nevertheless, when she encountered malnourished children in the barangay, she didn’t have the heart to quit! Her heart was torn into pieces the moment she laid her eyes on their skinny and bony bodies. Right there, she knew that those little angels needed her help.
She found a deeper purpose of her life in serving these children who are our future hope.
She started learning every little thing she needed to know, to do and even researched on ways how to guide the parents and guardians of the malnourished children. She found the tasks tedious and very difficult but was inspired by parents who were very eager to learn and who were really determined to do everything for the sake of their children.
Read more: The Bittersweet Journey of a Barangay Nutrition Scholar
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Hailed as the “City of Pines” and the melting pot of different peoples and cultures in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Baguio City is the center of education, trade and commerce in the region. It continues to attract tourist on a year-round basis mainly due to its cool climate, not reaching above 26 degrees centigrade even as the lowland areas are searing with their 35 degrees temperature. It also lures many families to seek employment and engage in small business in the city, thus the ethnicity of the population is not established as it caters to varied people, from all walks of life.
The City Nutrition Committee is composed of 22-member agencies and organizations, with their nutrition programs and projects supported by city ordinances passed in 2017. Their nutrition program implementation is strengthened with the presence of City Nutrition Office with 14 full time nutrition staff as Nutrition Coordinators supervising 253 nutrition volunteers composed of the Barangay Nutrition Scholars (BNSs) and Barangay Nutrition Action Officers (BNAOs), as well as providing technical assistance to barangay nutrition committees in the spirit of family, teamwork and fun.
The population is very fluid but with the presence of Barangay Nutrition volunteers in all the barangays, new migrants are identified and where there are children, they are registered in the nutrition masterlist. The city is small having an area of 57.49 square kilometers catering to 128 barangays. The support of the city and barangay leaders is laudable as they recognize and appreciate the well-being benefits from attending to the health and nutrition of their constituents, with the institutionalization of yearly nutrition action planning and performance implementation reviews (PIR). Programs and projects are funded assuring their support and implementation of the Philippine Plan of Action on Nutrition (PPAN) at their level.
Highlights of accomplishments and initiatives include the following:
Read more: Stronger and Deeper Involvement for a Healthier Baguio
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“Start children off on the way they should go and even when they are old they will not turn from it”
“It takes a village to raise a child.” It took her more than five years to finally understand the meaning of this simple sentence in its real and deep essence. Being a Barangay Nutrition Scholar (BNS), BNS Dagupon acknowledged that it was an opportunity to mingle and be one with her kabarangays. While doing rounds in every home, monitoring children’s weight and implementing various nutrition programs, she humbly realized that indeed, she is blessed to become an instrument of change. Therefore, she’s most willing to do all means within the limits of her capacity to always prioritize the well-being of her kabarangays, most especially the children. It is also heartwarming to say that without the helping hand of their Barangay Nutrition Committee (BNC), the success of the nutrition programs that were already started and/or being implemented would have not been possible.
One of the BNS programs that she’s particularly happy is the monitoring of underweight children. In their barangay, they are proud to say that through supporting the parents or nurturers with the careful monitoring of BNS, having underweight children in their charts is not a problem anymore! This achievement has become one of inspirations to continue improving their Barangay Nutrition Programs as it proved that success is achievable through hard work and prayers. Aside from that, she personally believed that focusing on keeping children properly nourished is a valuable contribution to the community and to the country as well.
In the process of thinking of ways on how to further improve their innovations, the programs of the National Nutrition Council (NNC) has become their guide in implementing the PPAN (Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition) especially the "PABASA sa Nutrisyon" and the Nutrition Education and Livelihood Class. The program focused on talks and information dissemination about nutrition that can easily be applied by parents and caregivers directly involved in feeding or taking care of the daily needs of their families. The good thing that came out of these nutrition programs are the simple yet effective tips from parents themselves to other parents in need of ideas or support.
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Nutrition promotion is one of our municipality’s development thrust that was spelled out in the Executive Legislative Agenda (ELA). The ELA of Tublay takes cognizance of the equal importance of both human resource and infrastructure development. Health and nutrition promotion is one of the road maps taken by the municipality in the area of human resource development. The strategy hopes to improve productivity and wellbeing of the constituents.
The first planning workshop conducted by the MNC and BNCs after their reorganization in 2007 resulted to the conceptualization of the municipal nutrition plan framework dubbed as “Tublay SHINES”. This is an acronym which stands for: Safe environment & disaster preparedness; Health and social services; Income generation and livelihood initiatives; Nutritious food intake and breastfeeding; Education focused on nutrition advocacy, promotion of healthy lifestyle and gender equality; Stable food supply and hunger mitigation. The said framework consists of a package of inter sector activities whose overall goal is to combat malnutrition thus improving the quality of life. The plan framework also acts as a converging point where different agencies collaborate for nutrition promotion. The components of “Tublay SHINES” is a localized version of the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition (PPAN) and the National Nutrition Council Impact Programs. The success of “Tublay SHINES” would be their humble contribution to achieving the PPAN. Nutrition intervention programs, projects and services were implemented within the framework of SHINES.
On the lighter side, the municipal nutrition committee conceptualized the SHINES to reflect the desire to shine in nutrition program implementation, a desire which was elusive in distant past. The Sangguniang Bayan of Tublay is preparing to institutionalize through an ordinance the “Tublay SHINES” as the municipal plan framework in nutrition promotion.
The highlight of nutrition program activities throughout the years are the staging of the Nutrition Month celebration every month of July. In the Municipality of Tublay, observance of nutrition month commences in July then runs through out until a culmination program in November that coincides with the month-long municipal foundation month anniversary celebration. Nutrition advocacy is being intensified in all the celebrations at various sites that is especially focused on the theme of the celebration. In 2017, the theme focused on the importance of having a healthy diet which should be adopted as a lifelong commitment.
Read more: Strengthening Nutrition Governance and Nutrition Service Delivery through “Tublay SHINES”
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Read more: Achieving Nutrition Gains through Nutrition-Specific and Sensitive Programs
The long journey towards zero malnutrition in the municipality of Alfonso Lista requires diligent labor on the part of the LGU and the Saluad Salun-at Council meaning “protection of health”. With the status of the nutrition program, there are still many works to be done and it will take time to realize this vision. However, the people working behind this program are strongly committed and inspired to implement the programs and sustain good nutritional practices until such time that all children, and throughout the generations of Listanians, will live healthier and more productive lives.
The local government prioritized addressing malnutrition by increasing its budget for nutrition and health programs by 34.8% from 2016 to 2017. This investment by the local government catalyzed the implementation of existing nutrition-specific and nutrition sensitive programs such as supplementary feeding to 87 wasted and severely wasted school children and 1,080 children enrolled in Child Development Centers; Malnutrition Reduction Program where 41 households with malnourished children were visited and counseled by a task force organized for its purpose; Insentibo para sa Kalusugan Mo where a sack of rice and P500 worth of groceries were given annually to families to improve nutritional status of selected malnourished children; Bitamina Para ti Salun-at where wasted and severely wasted school children and underweight and severely underweight preschool children were given 2 bottles of multi-vitamins per month for six months; and Watwat a Binnigat where schools do stretching and other exercises especially for the identified 6 overweight and 14 obese school children.
OTHER STRATEGIES AND LOCAL INITIATIVES
Karingud Program : financial assistance of P104,000.00 is given to 24 poor families with malnourished children during the dry season / no- farming period to ensure provision of food on the table.
