Andam Eba: A Story of Empowering Women
Andam Eba: A Story of Empowering Women
By: Herna Francis Mae B. Tano
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After the 7th wave of distribution to various communities in Cagayan de Oro, Andam Higala decided to recalibrate the movement. We conducted series of brainstorming sessions to improve the services and system of the advocacy. It took as more than a month to generate innovative solutions for the community. The team revisited all the community-identified problems of the women and children sectors and from there we have reassessed the underlying problems that are part of the effects of the pandemic.
As the quarantine continues, underlying and unseen problems threaten the welfare of the women here in the Philippines. Increasing number of unintended teenage pregnancies, unreported cases of gender-related violence among women and children, heightened rates of mental health related concerns and/or disorders, and financial adversities are just few of the problems faced by an “Eba” or a woman as she also faces the battle against Covid-19.For the women sector, we considered other timely and pressing issues such as the alarming increase of pregnancy rate. At the month of June, Commission on Population and Development released that there are about 218,000 expected births by 2021. There is really a call for action that we need to re-educate and simplify information about the reproductive health. Based on the newsletter released by About Cagayan de Oro anchored to the data of Commission on Population and Development, 40-50 Filipino teens, aged 10-14 are giving birth every week. According to UP Population institute in 2020, a number of 751,000 unintended pregnancies could be expected in the Philippines by the end of 2020. For some, the thought of unintended pregnancy during and even before the pandemic has already been a predicament especially when an individual is financially unstable to provide for his/her child/ren. It is undeniable that a lot of Filipinos today are experiencing financial hardships due to lack of income-generating opportunities and extreme poverty brought by the pandemic. Also, the staying at home campaign resulted to an increase of cases in violence and/or harassments. These are unseen problems that the society is facing. This can result to mental health issues among women and children who are victims of such violence and harassments. Lack of information about the civil rights is also a root cause for this recurring problem in the society.
Another problem on the women sector is the financial security. This pandemic resulted to an increase of unemployment and decrease of income to small scale businesses. Families belonging to low socioeconomic status or living below the poverty line are dependent to the aid from the government or non-government organizations which are not sustainable. This results to hunger or any health-related issues. With this, we established Andam Eba—a project providing need-based programs for the women sector. During our first implementation of the new initiative, it was a webinar series in partnership with eight government agencies, three non-government organizations, two businesses and one media partner. The webinar aims to empower teenage moms in these times of pandemic by educating and simplifying the available resources for women to aid arising problems toward their health and security which needs to be addressed immediately and is ideal in our current situation. This webinar primarily focuses on our city’s teenage moms aged 10-19 years old. After the implementation of the said webinar, with the help of our partners, we reassessed the evaluations and found out the further challenges of the women sector specifically the scholar-mothers in Cagayan de Oro.
One of the sectors who were heavily financially affected due to their untimely parenting are the 53 City Scholars, who, while in the program, have succumbed to early parenting while thriving to maintain their grades as a scholar. Majority of the said number might only have one child, but are also solo moms who are not only struggling as a breadwinner and as a care-giver in the family but also belongs to the current number of 14 million solo moms that were identified by the World Vision Health in 2020. Now, these scholar mothers are faced with the problems of providing not only for their academic needs but also provide for their children or family in the midst of the pandemic. Addressing the need for financial struggles of scholar-mothers who are also vulnerable to the retention process, the city scholarship office and project Andam Eba holds true to its mantra that uplifts every scholar towards their academic success and no one must be left behind.
Andam Eba testimony 1.mp4Andam Eba 2.0 is a capability-building and financial-enabling project for 53 scholar-mothers who were assessed by the City Scholarships Office as vulnerable in this time of pandemic and are mostly affected by the down-ward slope of the economy. Throughout the 10-month implementation of Andam Eba, the project aims to provide skills-training of scholar-mothers and to teach them about the basics of starting up a business in the new normal for them to sustain their scholarship and to provide their own needs and the needs of their children. The project is divided into phases namely:
a.) Ang pagsabot kay Eba (A community scanning and data gathering)
b.) Pag-igmat ky Eba Series (A capability-building series)
c.) Pagdumala ni Eba (Business pitching and online selling)
d.) Pagpadayun ni Eba (Business consultation and monitoring of the business)
e.) Paglambo ni Eba (Legalization of the business and culminating activity)
The project is now implemented within the city of Cagayan de Oro and is utilizing resources such as, but not limited to human resources, monetary resources, and technical inputs to turn its objectives into a reality. By the end of this project, the said beneficiaries will not only be provided with the livelihood but at the same time the skills needed for them to sustain their livelihood and to maintain their scholarships.
Keywords: Women, Pregnancy, Cagayan de Oro Women, Mothers
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