Lessons from Ilaw ng Buhay 555

In Ilaw ng Buhay (Light of Life) Program, three 20-family units, which roughly constitute a sub-village or purok , compose a neighborhood association or chapter. This cluster of puroks elects its own set of officers.

All the household heads undergo what is known as FIT or Family Ilaw Training, which is done in the village, right where the participants live, using available venues, such as a classroom, a barangay center, or even under the shade of  a tree.

 How was the FIT conducted by the Ilaw team and its local counterparts known as Local Development Trainers?

Each FIT class starts with a ceremony which proceeds as follows:

-a torch is lighted usually by the head of the village, the Mayor or any representative from either the village or municipal councils;

-each participant lights a candle from the torch as everybody sings the Ilaw song;  and

-the Ilaw Credo is recited by the participants led by the chapter  president.

The religious symbolism and overtones were introduced as an innovation to ensure seriousness of purpose on the part of the participants. This was in contrast with community training done by government agencies and NGOs which assumed the format of  technical training.

As introduction to the training proper, the lead trainer provides an overview about the training, its objectives, and how each participant can make the training activity successful by contributing to the topic being discussed. These topics include those programs integrated in the Ilaw ng Buhay approach: health and nutrition, backyard food production, family planning and environmental management. 

The innovation introduced here was for the trainer to talk about the actual poverty situation of the barangay and the common problems met by majority of households.  Most of the information gathered came from the poverty profile prepared by the team which included interview of “reference families,” those considered as among the poorest. 

From these interviews, the Ilaw team gathered information related to the consumption habits of the households and used this during the training. For example, the trainer would calculate the expenses for cigarettes and alcoholic drinks and used this to show that this amount could be better spent for food and school needs, etc.

Other information gathered from interviews with selected families would include:

-their reasons for having more than the number of children they could afford “to feed, shelter and educate” and use these reasons as basis for discussing responsible parenthood during the training;

-how each family uses time and own assets as resources to pursue goals to introduce the concept of short-term and long-term planning at household level;

-how each family regards environmental assets such as trees, soil, air, rivers, sea, fish and other marine life, etc.  and determine their awareness about ecological issues so as to bring these issues as close as possible to their everyday experience.

One indicator of success for FIT is if attendance increases from the first night to the next two nights. Each session builds on the previous one to gain understanding and interest and, finally, on the final session, there should have been developed on the part of the participant the urgency to act on the basis of their understanding of the various inputs.

Our experience was that this type of training attended by family heads generated sustained interest and were generally well-attended as we went farther beyond the poblacion. In villages near the center of the town, there was stiff competition from TV, movies and other community activities, whereas in the relatively remote places, the Family Ilaw Training with its unique ceremonies and rituals attracted more participants night after night for their being the “only game in town.”

Since our group had members from both the regular extension-type training and the innovative FIT, the consensus was that the latter had the greater potential to create impact in terms of message absorption and application.

The only problem would be how to replicate it without using older more experienced trainers and staff.

More next blog.