27 November 2020, Cagayan de Oro City – The National Nutrition Council X, as part of its 2020 Training and Development Plan for the regional office staff, organized an online training on Enhancing Communication Skills (Public Speaking & Preparing Communication Materials) held on 23 November 2020 via Zoom.
The activity was likewise opened to all interested Nutrition Action Officers (NAOs), District/City Nutrition Program Coordinators (D/CNPCs) and Nutritionist-Dietitians under the Department of Health’s Human Resource for Health Program.
Dr. Ramir Philip Jones V. Sonsona, Professor 1 and Department Chair of the Teaching Languages & SpEd in University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines (USTP) facilitated the one-day training.
The knowledge, values and skills possessed by a nutrition worker can define how the nutrition program is managed and coordinated with various stakeholders. Thus, the training was organized to further capacitate NNC X staff and local nutrition workers on communication skills.
Dr. Sonsona started the training with a discussion on public speaking in public service. Public speaking is a powerful tool to use for purposes such as motivation, influence, persuasion, informing, translation, or simply ethos. He mentioned of strategies to becoming a better speaker, guidelines, and branding. Dr. Sonsona also lectured on how to effectively write and deliver a good speech.
During the morning leg, participants were grouped for the exercise of delivering a sample speech on certain topics (i.e. Opening Remarks, Introduction to Guest Speaker, Keynote Speech, among others). He gave his two-cents on the presentations delivered, as well as recommendations. To end the morning session, he congratulated all presenters for doing well in the training exercises. In particular, he commended PNAO Marichu G. Tijing of Misamis Occidental for delivering a substantive speech with confidence and for being a proficient speaker.
The afternoon session focused on preparing effective communication materials. Dr. Sonsona presented the eight (8) principles in PowerPoint presentations namely, audience, message, content, simplicity, format, visual contrast and rule of thirds. Participants were tasked to layout a one-pager presentation applying the said principles. He gave comments to the presented outputs and advices for improvement. Morever, Dr. Sonsona also reminded the participants that PowerPoint are just a tool in communication.
Participants also gave their takeaways about the training. The training was very useful especially that the nature of work requires constant communication and public speaking episodes with key officials, decision-makers, nutrition workers, and even the constituents of the communities and various publics.
Nutrition Program Coordinator Gladys Mae S. Fernandez of NNC X expressed her gratitude to Dr. Sonsona for imparting his knowledge in enhancing communication skills. In addition, she mentioned that nutrition workers should not only possess the core values on nutrition skills but as well develop a good communication and advocacy skills for support to nutrition programs. (NO III Sheena Marie G. Talle/ND II Angelique Jean Maggay)
