Of Positive Ideas and Post-event Thoughts

We Pinoys are used to getting used to things. We're used to traffic, we put up with useless transport system and slow internet connection. We get used to being ravaged by storms year after year, and being robbed of our taxes administration after administration. 

It's the same story for countless communities all over the country, especially when it comes to health. Mothers think it's normal never to see a doctor for pre-natal checkup (they probably don't even know what pre-natal checkup means). Kids live with diarrhea and skin diseases 'cause there's just not enough water to wash their hands. Having dengue is part of growing up. And yeah every now and then, a friend or family member dies because he/she wasn't brought to the hospital on time. And people think it's okay, because they've gotten used to it.

I sweat the life out of me riding the MRT, because there's nothing I can do about the rotten railway system in the metro. But for neglected areas in country, they lose lives because there's nothing the can do about lack of access to health centers.

This is what struck me, the past two days sitting through the finals of Ideas Positive. 

Ideas Positive is a nationwide youth competition for innovative health solutions. Basically, it gets the youth to come up with ideas that address health problems in their communities. Teams with best ideas go through a bootcamp and receive seed money to implement their projects for six months. The project with the best outcome in the community wins the competition. 

Simply put, it's a venue for the youth to do something that's always been in them - make a difference. 

And difference they did make. They reached communities that the government doesn't. By building relations with local health workers and community members, really understanding the health problems in the communities, they successfully implemented projects that the government have been trying to for years. One team from Iloilo for example, educated old school Barangay Health Workers and convinced them to use a mobile app for faster emergency response. 

Yes, their results are small scale, but isn't that better than no results at all? One team from Cebu built a low-cost water tank system out of PET bottles and implemented a hygiene and sanitation education program in one elementary school. But they envision the project to region-wide, then nationwide, so they manualized their project for other schools/communities to replicate. 

In William Easterly's The White Man's Burden, he talked about health programs failing because it's always the big plans forcing its way to small communities the Big Plan makers know nothing of. He suggests that the best way to go, is find what works in a grassroots level and take it from there. Seeing the how the teams transformed their communities with their simple but innovative interventions, I understood what Easterly meant. 

But the biggest transformation these youth teams made - in the communities and themselves - is in the mindset. How they made communities realize that what IS, is not what always SHOULD BE. That every person's life matters and is not just another number in the health statistics. 

These teams, they're the stark reminders that every person, every family - even in the farthest, far-flung areas of this country - deserve adequate healthcare. They threw the put-up-with and get-used-to attitude out the window, and replaced it with a renewed sense of empowerment and value for quality life. Where mothers, fathers, elderly and kids can - and should - live healthy and happy. 

A happy kid at a dengue awareness and prevention session by a team from Baguio City. Taken during one of the community visits I tagged along for Ideas Positive.

I never did anything socially relevant when I was in college (social drinking lang, if that counts). And I am mind blown at what these kids (kids!) did and would continue to do for a better, healthier Philippines.


Congratulations and thank you to the teams of Ideas Positive Run 5, for proving that this country hasn't gone to the dogs.

Sana dumami pa kayo. :) 

To know more about Ideas Positive, visit www.unilabfoundation.org or ideaspositive.com.