COMMUNITY ASSEMBLY + PRIORITIZATION OF PROBLEMS

The work doesn’t end with house to house interview, battling the heat in a long walk just to reach the houses located in high lands. The real deal plays in the action or process of deciding the importance or urgency of a problem to be prioritized.

In the process of prioritization, each interviewed household was asked to at least give three perceived problems in the community. A total of 31 perceived problems were tallied among 508 households interviewed. Among the tallied perceived problems, only ten were health related. The group also tallied ten perceived problems that were observed during the house to house interview and ocular inspection. 

Perceived problems were presented during the Community Assembly and also in an emergency session that the group requested to gather all Barangay officials, leaders of the different organizations, and Barangay health workers of Barangay Motibot. 

The problems were presented to the council, leaders, and barangay health workers. After the presentation each member was given a paper and a pen and was tasked to list their top ten problems among the top 20 combined perceived problems in health from the interviewed households and the from the group. After the scores were tallied, the group explained the tool that was used in prioritizing the problem which is called Maglaya. 

After thorough explanation and in depth discussion with the group, the council, leaders, and Barangay Health Workers started to prioritize the problem using Maglaya, and used voting as their mainstream of accepting the decision of the group.  

Officials, leaders, and Barangay health workers of Barangay Motibot

The session ended up with the group having 6 prioritized problems and a community health plan made by the council, leaders, and barangay health workers.

Nurullaji A. Aguil
ADZU SOM, Level 1