An estimated two to six million people are adversely affected every year by natural disasters in the Philippines. This article explains the roots of service learning and discusses how classrooms are effectively linked to communities by increasing student awareness and capability to respond to crisis situations. To sustain voluntary relief efforts by students, community development has been integrated in courses taught in many schools and universities. A case study of the Ateneo de Manila University's 'Theory and Practice of Social Development' course established in the 1970s for relief and rehabilitation work in flood-prone areas, examines the contents and issues of service learning in the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments globally to impose lockdown measures and mobility restrictions to curb the transmission of the virus. As economies slowly reopen, governments face a trade-off between implementing economic recovery and health policy measures to control the spread of the virus and to ensure it will not overwhelm the health system. We developed a mathematical model that measures the economic losses due to the spread of the disease and due to different lockdown policies. This is done by extending the subnational SEIR model to include two differential equations that capture economic losses due to COVID-19 infection and due to the lockdown measures imposed by the Philippine government. We then proceed to assess the trade-off policy space between health and economic measures faced by the Philippine government. The study simulates the cumulative economic losses for 3 months in 8 scenarios across 5 regions in the country, including the National Capital Region (NCR), to capture the trade-off mechanism. These scenarios present the various combinations of either retaining or easing lockdown policies in these regions. Per region, the trade-off policy space was assessed through minimising the 3-month cumulative economic losses subject to the constraint that the average health-care utilisation rate (HCUR) consistently falls below 70%, which is the threshold set by the government before declaring that the health system capacity is at high risk. The study finds that in NCR, a policy trade-off exists where the minimum cumulative economic losses comprise 10.66% of its Gross Regional Domestic Product. Meanwhile, for regions that are non-adjacent to NCR, a policy that hinges on trade-off analysis does not apply. Nevertheless, for all simulated regions, it is recommended to improve and expand the capacity of the health system to broaden the policy space for the government in easing lockdown measures.
Combining the logistics of a centralized in-school program with decentralized implementation to improve the diets and nutritional status of school-age children, a community-supported central kitchen model prepared and packed meals for schools.n The model's success was attributed to financial sustainability institutionalized at the national level through laws, operational sustainability maintained by local government units (LGUs), strong community support, mobilization from volunteers, and embedding of the program in the city's and municipalities' social networks.n Community involvement in central kitchen operations translated into volunteer accountability and program ownership that organized local interests and enabled community members to demand related health, education, and social services from their local elected officials, contributing to their sustained interest in participating in the program.
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