Danao finally breaks habit, Go for sanitation, hygiene

by magnolia_eic | Sep 18, 2010 | Headlines, Local News / Bohol Balita

PERHAPS an out-building made of coconut and nipa leaves for a toilet merits no news at all.

But when it eloquently shows a community’s first tentative steps to break a habit that kept generations from
learning the benefits of sanitation and hygiene, it surely gives them the print space.

In Danao, Bohol, communities have started to dig the truth behind health, sanitation and clean environment,
a fact that makes Danao Mayor Thomas Louis Gonzaga hopeful in his drive to bring his town off the hooks of
poverty.

“I believe in good health starts with a clean environment” the mayor said and adds, “education is the key to
good health.”

Unsuccessful in their initial attempt to get the people digging for their own sanitary toilets despite the
town providing toilet bowls, cement and technical help, the need to get people understanding the value of
cleanliness finally got to them through the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program (4PS).

Implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the 4Ps in Danao town also
allowed beneficiaries, whom the town granted toilet construction materials, to sit on community assemblies
and family development sessions.

It was through DSWD’s Family Development Sessions (FDS) that program partners sa Department of Health,
LGU and Department of Education picked the opportunity to deal with educating the beneficiaries the
importance of having toilets.

Here, what the town could not do: educating their people was unwittingly advanced by the 4Ps.

Educating the people to contribute to a cleaner environment in line with the town vision of a brisk extreme
eco-tourism activity as an engine for over-all development was then a big problem, Mayor Gonzaga admitted.

We want the communities to install sanitary toilets for health and hygiene purposes, but habit seems to get on
the way, the athletic town chief executive confessed.

Adopting an approach called community driven development, communities identify their problems and map
out solutions to them, explains a municipal social welfare officer of one of the DSWD 4Ps beneficiary towns.

4P is a national government poverty alleviation program that provides social assistance in conditional cash
grants to extremely poor households to help them break the intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Its long-term objective is for communities to improve their health and education particularly of children aged
0-14 years old.

To continually avail of the cash grants, the government ascertains that family beneficiaries attend health and
pregnancy assistance sessions, regular preventive health check-ups and vaccines for children, responsible
parenthood sessions, mother’s classes, parent-effectiveness seminar and family development sessions.

To keep the children informed, children of beneficiaries must attend day-care, pre-school, elementary and
high-school at least 85% of the time. (rac/PIABohol/DSWD7)