Valuing Volunteering in Building Collective Resilience

Manila – The Philippine Coalition on Volunteerism (PhilCV) as a consortium of volunteer-involving organizations (VIOs) in the Philippines takes on the challenges in promoting the important contribution that volunteering can provide in building collective resilience in the midst of the pandemic.

Despite the unprecedented challenges that the pandemic has wrought upon our country, COVID-19 provided an opportunity for the PhilCV community to learn and get inspiration from member and non-member organizations’ response to the pandemic through webinars and community interventions. PhilCV - through its member organizations’ support and participation - implemented an Information, Education, Communication (IEC) project aimed at promoting COVID-19 awareness, facilitating mitigation strategies and ramping up the involvement of citizens in strengthening community resilience to the pandemic. Staff volunteers from Philam Foundation, San Miguel Foundation, and VSO collaborated to produce the IEC materials and remotely assisted project implementation. Project implementing organizations – the Jesuit Volunteers Philippine Foundation (Luzon), the Uygongco Foundation (Visayas) and the Josefa Segovia Foundation (Mindanao) capitalized on their local partners -- the churches, the schools, the government and the local businesses for this campaign. Aside from the usual face-to-face IEC, a pool of volunteers maximized the online platforms to share COVID-19 video in local dialect and allotted Q&A for further clarifications or feedback.  Reports for this pilot project indicate encouraging results from rural communities in Mindoro (Luzon), Panay-Iloilo (Visayas), including indigenous peoples in Davao (Mindanao). 

Published at IAVE's Magazine - Volunteering Together

Read more: https://www.iave.org/volunteering-together-magazine/issue-9/volunteering-together-issue-9/#fb0=33

This collaborative effort was under the Strengthening Volunteers' Engagement & Social Inclusion in Building Resilient Communities to COVID-19 Project, funded by VSO Philippines. 

Email: philcv.org@gmail.com