When Enrile Mayor Miguel Decena, Jr. greeted the people of Barangay Lanna, it was not just one of those greetings he did since elected as Local Chief Executive in May this year.

On a table, various seeds of vegetables, food supplements and other gift items were on a display as pre-schoolers tried to outsmart each other in the various games and other fun-filled activities; their mothers on the dance floor, September 27. That fateful day saw a mixed crowd of barangay officials, nutrition workers and advocacies from the government and the target audience of mothers and their children.

Decena  said he was thankful the National Nutrition Council in Region  2 selected his town as part of a very significant event  in the province as he assured  full support to all the former’s programs and activities to promote good nutrition.

Meanwhile, the members of the media could hardly contain their excitement as they virtually ran the three- hour activity. In fact, most of them brought gifts and together with what’s on the table, distributed them to an equally excited and a thankful audience.

The nutrition event was not the usual activity the media and NNC has done together; it was a celebration of a group which, admittedly, has been the toast of nutrition advocacies the last ten years.

Yes, the Balay Ni Ifan Media Task Force of NNC region 2 just celebrated its first decade of service.

Ten years ago, Cagayan media thought of ways to help improve the nutrition status of the province. Ten years ago, they bonded together, their pride on its ebb for an advocacy they never thought could go this far; they built the house along Bagay Road in Tuguegarao City.

A decade earlier this year, even the national government considers the Balay Ni Ifan Media Task Force of the National Nutrition Council in Region 2 as one of the best practices ever conceived by a joint force of media men from the radio and television broadcast, the print industry and the social media in Cagayan.

It has been ten years since the members sang and danced to their audience, visited schools to check on food served, talked on food elements over their respective media outlets, allotted space on their newspapers and airtime and were tagged along wherever and whenever the NNC region 2 needed their information services.

The group has intrigued other members of the media from both the Ilocos Region and the Cordilleras that they came to take a look on what the Balay has been  doing all along. They want to know  the how’s of the task force and the Balay members are all too willing to share what they went through, the last ten years.

“It was both a strategy and a battlecry designed and conceptualized by the members. Thank you is never to  express our gratitude to these men and women of Cagayan’s media,” Meggie Lonzaga, Regional nutrition coordinator, said.

As it has been written over and over, the plan was to saturate all sectors through a massive information drive to promote good nutrition under the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program of then Arroyo administration.

The Task Force was so strong that they even lead celebrations of Nutrition Months in July as  part of such advocacy.  Why Balay Ni Ifan (Ibanag, Juan Dela Cruz)?  The Balay symbolizes the Pinoy’s Bahay Kubo where ‘hunger can be mitigated or contained”  and Ifan represents the residents of the Philippines, in this case, the Cagayan Valley region. Officially, the task force is called Balay Ni Ifan Task Force to Promote Good Nutrition in Cagayan Valley; a multi-media approach group.

Tw days after a two-day planning workshop in 2010, they went to work and all available  media materials on nutrition were disseminated; soap operas, nutrition messages and tips, interviewes, print and broadcast features, commentaries and field reports became the order of the day. They covered all, as in all, nutrition programs and projects  to promote good nutrition, live, on air or canned.

One should consider that the media is peopled by individuals  with varied idiosyncracies, political orientations, self-proclaimed information messiahs whose pride are higher than most. They  feel they belong to a ‘republic’ of their own. But the National Nutrition Council in region 2, bless its soul, is determined to make a difference. It successfully did and erased the myth that the media is one entity difficult to dealt with.

“What made the Balay stood for ten years now may not be that extra-ordinary. We are just one group created or established to help NNC disseminate  and drumbeat their  programs and activities in the region,” Teresa Campos, a broadcaster of Radyo Pilipinas and one of the founding members, said.

However, what sustained the group, she added,  is the NNC’s unwavering support to the Task Force.

“We simply reciprocated with vigor and enthusiasm. They value the Balay as their own which make us more excited to do things with them. Another reason perhaps is the common ground that the members stand on, and that is not to elect officers, “ she added.

She clarified that the media is never afraid of  responsibilities but the members would like to see if  the set up will succeed.

It did and it will be in the next decades to come.