On its 7th year, Volunteer Youth Leaders for Health (VYLH)-Philippines has gained new members and reached new milestones as it continued to advance the mission of empowering the Filipino youth for health. This year, the network made major strides in volunteer training, social media utilization, and fostering exchange and partnerships.
Training new volunteers
As part of an active effort of involving more youth to the advocacy, VYLH-Philippines introduced the network to youth leaders through local orientation sessions and youth camps. These volunteer training and formation activities were spearheaded by the four VYLH-Philippines clusters as a testament to unwavering commitment of the network to its mission of expanding its membership throughout the country.
Map of VYLH-Philippines Training and Recruitment Activities for 2016 |
Last March 2016, VYLH North and Central Luzon held an orientation on VYLH and its advocacies which was attended by youth leaders and department heads from six universities in Pangasinan. On the other hand, a two-day advocacy and leadership orientation was organized last November by VYLH Mindanao for the officers and members of Pag-asa Youth Association of the Philippines (PYAP)-Davao City Federation.
In addition to youth orientations, youth camps remain to be the major avenue of volunteer recruitment in the network. This year, VYLH was able to organize six youth camps. Briefly, a majority of these camps were regional camps (five out of six), with the most held in the Visayas (three out of six). Regional Youth Camps were held in Western Visayas in April; Central Visayas in August; Eastern Visayas in September; and, Central Luzon and CARAGA in October. Meanwhile, a cluster youth camp was organized by VYLH-Philippines NCR-South Luzon last October and this was participated by youth leaders from NCR, CaLaBaRZon and Bicol Region.
New milestones were achieved by the volunteers in these youth camps with the first regional camp organized in Eastern Visayas, and the successful conduct of youth camps in each of the regions of the Visayas Cluster – the first Cluster to complete a regional series in the network. On the other hand, this is the first time for NCR-South Luzon to hold a cluster youth camp after only having youth orientations in the past years.
In Mindanao, CARAGA volunteer youth leaders (VYLs) remain to be leaders and innovators with the first regional congress of CARAGA VYLs and third regional youth camp for the region. The congress gathered CARAGA volunteers from various VYLH batches since 2009.