Commentary
Funding change
By Lourdes Didith Mendoza Rivera
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:29:00 07/02/2008
An old friend who dropped by my office recently wondered what had happened to Philippine nongovernmental organizations. She noted that funding for civic projects seems to have become small and infrequent, and as a result, direct community service has dwindled. She shared my fear that one day, civil society may not have enough money to mobilize people and empower the grassroots.
I reflected on this observation while checking the charts our mother-trainers have followed up in Payatas, Quezon City. You see, our office runs a small natural family planning program (NFP) in Payatas, and several mothers in the area run it for us in the field. We have trained them on how to use the Billings Ovulation method and the Standard Days method, so that they in turn can teach their neighbors how to use them in planning the sizes of their own families.
In Payatas, poverty is a byword, and people contend with it on a daily basis. The natural family planning methods enable women to know their bodies, have their husbands participate in the process of planning their families, and engender respect for the sacredness of their bodies and their marriages. These may not directly alleviate their plight, but these can be used as weapons to fight poverty in a manner that does not demean their personhood. Poverty has done that already, and we want that to change.
After years of running the program, we are sure that it does not even put a dent in the population problem in urban poor communities. We may have helped hundreds of families to plan the sizes of their families in Payatas, but we also know that this is just one area, and so many more areas need to be acquainted with natural family planning methods. However, we are sure of one thing: the women we have trained have seen their lives slowly changing for the better.
For one, our mother-trainers have added a new dimension to their lives. As they run their households efficiently, so do they run the natural family planning program. They have found a career, and it is one that expands their nurturing souls to the community, and indirectly to the whole society. They have bloomed right smack in the wastelands of Payatas, and other mothers now call on them for help.
Right now, they are venturing to another field: helping other couples revitalize and reenergize their marriages, as they try to do it in their own. This they do with a program we are pilot-testing called the Ligawan sa Tahanan.
These women have accepted life right where they are and are changing it for the better. While in this process of self-improvement, our mother-trainers are helping others by showing that they are with them, living the same life, facing the same economic burden, yet ever hopeful that things will change. And this hope they share with the women they encounter while running the NFP.
The stories of our mother-trainers are inspiring. They conduct two to three NFP sessions a month and follow up on their trainees on a daily basis after their household chores are done. They do this even if they complain that they have to line up for hours to get NFA rice, or that they cannot afford to buy school supplies for their children. For them, these problems have become rather common, and they try their best to not let them get in the way of their community service through the NFP.
As a result of their efforts, we have taught natural family planning methods to almost a thousand women in Payatas, and about half of them are now active users of the Billings Ovulation method and Standard Days method.
We interviewed some of the users last summer, and many of them said that their relationships with their husbands have improved, and that they do not have to spend for pills or condoms anymore, nor do they have to suffer from the unwanted side-effects of contraceptives.
Sadly, we also encountered stories where women have no other choice but to use contraceptives even if they have to suffer migraines or having periods twice a month. Their husbands would not allow NFP; some husbands think that natural family methods do not safely ward off unwanted pregnancy.
We have also encountered women who do not use any method in planning the sizes of their families. Some have 8 or even 12 children. Once a woman who was only 21 already had four children. Their husbands, they said, force them to have sex frequently.
It is this mind-set we are trying to change. More than limiting the number of children, what we want is for both women and men to see the sacredness of life and their role in maintaining that sacredness. And this goal is hard to measure: you can only see it in the passion a person dedicates to his or her life, or in the fire in the belly one shows through his or her actions, as shown by our mother-trainers in Payatas.
This may be one of the reasons funding for NGOs has dwindled through the years. We do not have enough numbers to show that civil society has made a difference in the lives of the impoverished. But real change takes time; it has to take root in the heart.
But if one has a heart for the poor, I guess, numbers do not matter. What matters more is that the poor we have touched feel that change is happening, and that it is in process. Plutarch said it succinctly: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
Life, hard as it for them right now, is going to change, for the better.
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