2019
This is an Entry to the Government Best Practice Recognition Awards
Title
MANNINGning Sunday: Empowering the Youth, one Sunday at a time!
Organization
Sangguniang Kabataan of San Isidro, Taytay, Rizal
Best practice Focus Area(s)
Leadership, Customer and citizen focus
Summary
Sangguniang Kabataan of Barangay San Isidro, Taytay, Rizal initiated a program entitled MANNINGning Sunday. It is a program conducted every Sunday that aims to help the indigent youth in Taytay, Rizal achieve a better life through education, literacy, empowerment, nourishment, nutrition, and healthcare. Impoverished communities in Taytay, Rizal were visited with organized activities that are packaged into one that will promote a holistic and sustainable youth development such as open dialogues, boodle fight, sport equipment distributions, mini youth talks to help increase awareness on certain relevant social issues and the creation of their community youth council.
Background and Problem
Taytay, Rizal is a 1st class municipality in the Province of Rizal and is highly known as the Woodworks and Garments Capital of the Philippines.
With a population of 400,000, young people constitute a large and rapidly growing proportion of the population in Taytay, Rizal. These young people live in a rapidly changing world, faced with many pressures- poverty, unemployment, poor health condition, and lack of education are the common problems facing the youth of Taytay. Many youth are trapped in poverty with few opportunities to learn or to earn a decent living. But if the youth can realize their full potential, the whole community will be transformed. The key is to empower these young people by unleashing their potentials and encouraging them to get involved in the community in order to create a long-lasting impact in society.
Solution and Impact
In order to help the young people realize their full potential, the LGU focused on Youth Empowerment. The methodology is to promote a positive development setting for the youth. The program aims to encourage youth competence, confidence, and connections. It focuses on youth being active and instrumental agents of change in their communities. With this, the Sangguniang Kabataan of San Isidro is taking the lead in empowering the underprivileged youth by providing opportunities to help them gain access to a brighter future and find a solution to eradicate poverty.
Through this, the organization is able to understand the problems facing the youth on a more personal approach and provide solutions on how the agency can address their needs. The main purpose of the program is to embolden them to organize their own youth group that could create long term and sustainable projects in their own communities, in a way that could empower and create ripple effects among all members of the community.
This emphasizes the participation of the local community in the development initiatives so that they can select their own goals and the means of achieving them. The project team coordinated with village presidents, purok chairman and homeowners’ associations to help us identify potential youth leaders that could be the youth representatives of their respective villages, sitios, and purok. And because of the concerted and collaborative effort, the team gathered youth community leaders in different puroks and sitios and helped them in establishing their own community youth organizations. As of today, 30 communities have already been served with more than 500 empowered youth leaders working together as one in transforming our communities.
Milestones
With its implementation, MANNINGning Sunday has produced remarkable results in the barangay. There was increase in employment opportunities, decrease in out of school youth, increase awareness on social issues, a more open and transparent SK Council, decrease in drug use, and increase in active citizenship through the establishment of 30 youth councils with more than 500 empowered youth. And now, the team is gearing up to bring MANNINGning Sunday into greater heights through the expansion of the program to other barangays making MANNINGning Sunday, Taytay’s number one youth empowerment program.