Family Cooperation Health Services Foundation Inc.
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Mission Statement
FAMCOHSEF is a non-stock non-profit corporation registered with the SEC and accredited by the DSWD and the Philippine Council for NGO Certification. Our vision is to see healthy communities in underprivileged urban areas and to create jobs for urban poor men & women through health education. Good health will always be a challenge especially in underserved urban settings and so this has been our direction since we started in 1991. Over the past 25 years FAMCOHSEF has focused on health education running: Primary Health Care (PHC), Care of the Elderly Training Program (CETP), Nutrition Education with supplemental feeding, and Health & Wellness for the youth. The programs do not discriminate against faith nor gender preference. However the nature of health education attracts more women to our training programs and we encourage participation of the youth, aged 17 to 24. We train Community Health Workers in basic health care for the PHC and care and companionship of the elderly for the CETP. Our programs are geared towards creating jobs and instilling strong human values and good moral conduct. Knowledge, attitude and skills and jobs are the 4 pillars of our programs.
About This Cause
THE AIMS OF OUR PROJECT: FAMCOHSEF aims to develop underprivileged urban communities into healthy communities with their own effective and sustainable home-based health programs. This is done through the training of Community Health Workers in an integral process where knowledge, skills, and the appropriate attitude are taught. At present we have 4 main programs. Our Level 1 Program is the Primary Health Care Program, the Level 2 Program is Care of the Elderly. The Nutrition Education with supplemental feeding is the 3rd program. Continuing Education is our 4th program where graduates of Primary Health Care and Care of the Elderly come back once a month for refresher courses. We started a Health & Wellness program for Grades 8 to 10 in 2019 to help the youth who used to live with their families in informal dwellings along the railroad tracks of Manila to know how best to be healthy and encourage them to make informed choices for themselves. Since 2017, we do an annual one day outreach in Tondo 1, a place considered as the poorest area in Manila where families live on top of recyclable garbage and make a living picking and selling what they can from this dump. In response to sorely needed medical advice during the pandemic, we started a free on line teleconsultation with volunteer doctors attending to requests from the poor sector of Manila. This was March of 2021. We continue with this teleconsulting and now have an onsite doctor once a week in our health facility in Tondo. OUR IMMEDIATE BENEFICIARIES: For our training programs, our immediate beneficiaries are volunteer Community Health Workers (CHW) who live in urban poor communities. The CHW are the extension arms of the local health centre. Each CHW takes care of 80 to 150 families. These volunteer CHW are mostly high school graduates, mothers or even grandmothers and a few men who are expected to provide such basic primary health care within their designated area of families such as treatment of common childhood diseases, identification and monitoring of common communicable diseases, encouraging environmental sanitation, monitoring and encouraging maternal care, child care, care of the elderly, dental care and providing first aid. HOW MANY ARE THE BENEFICIARIES: To date, FAMCOHSEF has graduated 533 trainees from its Level 1 Primary Health Care (PHC) Program and 137 trainees from the Care of the Elderly. Over 200 families have benefitted from the Nutrition Education Program. THE NEED IS VERY PALPABLE: In marginalized communities, health is a basic need that is poorly met by government. Health facilities are ill equipped and there is severe manpower shortage. An Asian Development Bank study reports that 8 women die every day from pregnancy and child-birth-related complications. Efforts from public and private sectors need to be mobilized to bring relief at the local level where it is more manageable. There is an urgent need to enhance women's capacities to conserve the health of their families and their communities. FAMCOHSEF is currently operating in Muntinlupa City, a dense community of roughly 500,000 people south of Manila. The city is divided into 9 units or barangays. 8 of these barangays have a large proportion of urban poor earning less than US $ 9.26 for the daily needs of a family of 5. Southville III, a relocation site of informal dwellers who lived along the railroad tracks of Muntinlupa is one of the communities FAMCOHSEF is involved in. Here there is 1 health center with 1 doctor, 2 nurses, and 2 midwives catering to a community of 8,000 homes with an estimated population of 45,000 people. The health center is open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Because of the huge gap in the needs of the people and the health services provided, Community Health Workers (CHW) are relied on for the basic health needs of families. They monitor and report outbreak of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, dengue. They help implement the anti-tuberculosis campaign of the Department of Health, they make sure children are vaccinated on time, monitor their growth rate and refer them to feeding and nutrition programs. They encourage mothers to go to the community health center for their pre-natal check ups, they monitor the vital signs of the elderly and train families in their area on geriatric care. This situation is replicated all over Metro Manila. FAMCOHSEF collaborates with the local government unit (LGU) in the training of community health workers. The training programs are presented to the council of barangay (village) presidents who suggest participants to the program. FAMCOHSEF provides feedback to this council and to the Mayor of Muntinlupa on the progress of the training programs. Coordination with the local government ensures regular participation and completion by the trainees in the program and appreciation by the local government officials of the achievements and improved capabilities of these CHWs. With our last training program, FAMCOHSEF has established new linkages with the HOSPICE org in both Muntinlupa and the city of Manila. Doctors, a Nutritionist and Nurses from the Family Clinic of the largest public run hospital - the Philippine General Hospital located in the heart of Manila have joined the roster of trainors/lecturers in FAMCOHSEF's training programs. WHO HAVE BEEN OUR PARTNERS: LINCCO - L'Institut pour la Curture et la Cooperation has funded 3 programs of Level 1- Primary Health Care and the pilot project of the Level 2 - Nutrition and Care of Children and the Elderly. SOROPTIMIST International Alabang have likewise partnered with FAMCOHSEF in 2 of its training programs. The Department of Science and Technology partnered in a feeding program. The ADB (Asian Development Bank) Staff Fund likewise assisted in some earlier feeding programs. GVS (Global Voluntary Service) of Japan was a major partner of FAMCOHSEF in putting up its field office in Rizal Village and furnishing the needed training equipment for its programs. FAMCOHSEF launched in 2004 its Bulilit (means small) Health Workers' Training Program in a village public elementary school in near by Las Pinas City. From this initial venture in training a core group of top students in Grades 4 and 5 came the Kabataan Initiative (Youth Group) where 150 top students from 3 public high schools in Las Pinas attend regular after school life skills classes with its own mentoring program. HOW OUR BENEFICIARIES ARE INVOLVED: There are 3 stages of involvement by our beneficiaries: prior to the start of a training program, during the training itself, and post training. Prior to the start of training, we undertake a needs assessment of the community. We invite volunteer community health workers through the local health clinic and through referrals, to an interview and to fill up our questionnaires so as to know their educational attainment, their inclinations, their availability, their willingness to be trained and their responsibilities at home and in their community. Our social worker visits the homes of these volunteers, assesses the situation, and recommends acceptance of the volunteer in the programs. Once enrolled in the program, the trainees commit to a minimum attendance at the sessions. Quizzes and exams are given and an acceptance level must be met for the trainees to eventually graduate from the program. This requires commitment and seriousness on their part. During training, the trainees are mentored by volunteers who have twice a month chats with them for their personal growth, encouraging the honing of values and attitudes for their own good as individuals, as mothers, as service providers in their communities. This is an essential component of our training programs and requires the cooperation of the trainees. They all look forward to these mentoring sessions. Another component of the program is the hours of practicum, or practical application of skills training whether it is at the health center, home of the elderly and abandoned, or in orphanages and hospitals. The trainees attend these activities and they are graded for their performance both in skills in attitude. Post training, the graduates are encouraged to attend periodic updates given so that they keep us posted on their work and for continuing learning. In running the nutrition and supplemental feeding, the trainees help organize the local mums to attend these sessions. They assist in feeding the children and running activities with the kids while the mums attend the nutrition talks. They help clean up after too. KEY ACTIVITIES OF OUR PROJECT: The methodology used in all the training programs of FAMCOHSEF is the dual approach to integral education, combining lecture with return demo and a virtues formation talk with a mentoring program. A life coach follows up the trainee, encouraging her to develop solid human virtues and a strong character to be of better service to the community. This dual approach is FAMCOHSEF's distinguishing feature in its training programs in health. These are our programs: 1) The Level 1 training program - Primary Health Car (PHC) Program - a course which runs from 6-9 months depending on weather conditions and availability of the trainees who have to fulfil commitments to the local government and their health center. We normally have between 30-40 participants for this program. 2) The Level 2 training program - Care of the Elderly- a course which runs for 4.5 months A good class number would be between 25-30 trainees in attendance 3) The Nutrition Education and supplemental feeding - Between 40-45 children and their mothers enroll in the nutrition and supplemental feeding program. The children are around 4.5 years of age and enroll in a government run pre-school. It is barangay, or community based. 4) For the Continuing Education Program roughly between 20-45 attend this once a month course.