The Different Kinds of People in Purok Assembly

Last May 2017 we conducted health teachings about tuberculosis, hypertension, and water purification methods in the 4 puroks of the barangay instead of having it as a general assembly so that it would be more organized. As part of the health teachings, we gave them pre-test and post-test for us to be able to assess their knowledge. Unlike during the past community exposures that we had the chance to know them individually during the house-to-house survey, in this exposure we only had a small time to spend with the community people. However, we still had the chance to know them more through the purok meetings. Here are the different kinds of people during the purok assembly:

1. The Cheerful Givers. We were so touched with our aunties/nanays in the community who helped us prepare foods such as saging, kamote, pinya, and many more. Those are not just for us but for their neighbors as well. They also offered their place for us to use for our activities

2. The Early Birds. They are called early birds not because they arrived extra earlier but simply because they arrived on time. It always happened that way. Every time we were about to start the activity, only one or two people were present so we had to allot extra time to wait for the others.

3. So the rest of the group are the Late Comers. But since we know that they were busy doing their household chores and other priorities, we understand why they were late and we are grateful that even though they were busy, they still found ways to attend the meeting.

4. The Friendly Ones. Most of the people are friendly to us. And now we could know them more in the way they interact with each other. They know each and every one so much. They are like one big family already.

5. The Jokers. They were the ones who made the crowd laugh during the discussion. Every time I asked them if there were questions that they wanted to ask, they would no doubt ask questions in a humorous way.

6. The Attentive Ones. I appreciate these people because as we give lectures, they would listen to us from beginning to end and I could really say that they were able to understand what we taught them because their scores during post-test are high compared to their pre-test.

There are still so many more that I can say with the community people. Within those four days of the purok assembly I have known them more, not just individually through their personalities but also the community as a whole. There were puroks that participate well and are attentive during health teachings, and there are also puroks that were quite noisy. Overall we can assess of how interested they were with the Health Programs through the attendance of each purok. We were not able to reach the number of households that we wanted to attain. We had a glimpse of their strengths and weaknesses as a community. By all these observations that we had, we can use these as a gauge of how the community works as a whole regarding their health issues and we can use these as a guide for the planning for the strategies of the activities that will be held for the next exposures in order for us to help them be a better community.