In case you missed it, check out this feature on Roots of Health in this month's issue of Town and Country Magazine (Philippines edition).
So pleased that they featured Lyn's story and highlighted how she started as our first client and is now our Assistant Director! :) (Full article text below the photograph)
Planting Seeds for
Tomorrow
When she was
in her second year at Palawan State University, Rhealyn Paliza faced a problem,
a growing one. “I got pregnant and I
was about to give up my education. Dr. Susan Evangelista, one of my teachers
during that time, convinced me to change my mind.” Paliza recounts. “She told
me that getting pregnant shouldn’t be a hindrance to getting an education. I
needed to give my child a good future.” While she faced a lot of challenges,
she eventually earned her degree and became a teacher, all the while rearing
her now seven-year old boy.
A year after that first talk, Evangelista
approached Paliza once more, this time to convince her to help set up an
organization that sought to help women in similar situations. “Susan was so
alarmed by the number of students that approached her to say that they had to
give up school because they were pregnant,” Paliza says. That organization
eventually became Roots of Health (ROH) and Paliza became its assistant
director.
“There was
just a complete lack of knowledge of how pregnancies happen. And these were
smart kids, but they just didn’t know how it happened. Their hopes and dreams
got derailed,” says Amina Evangelista Swanepoel, Evangelista’s daughter who
moved from New York to Palawan to work with ROH, and now serves as its
executive director. (Evangelista sits as deputy director and Swanepoel’s husband
Marcus is its media and program director.) Today, the organization works with
four communities in Puerto Princesa as well as schools within the area.
ROH’s
approach is holistic, and has three priorities: education, healthy pregnancies
and nutritional support. Its goal is to produce communities that are well
informed and aware of all the options that are available to them. Some of its
programs includes maternal reproductive health sessions, teen health sessions,
community health advocate training, support programs for underweight children,
and even one that includes creating your own vertical garden to help sustain a
family.
Raising
funds has been a challenge Swanepoel admits, given that its cause is somewhat
politicized. “A lot of donors do not want to become involved in an issue that
might land them in the spotlight,” she says. Still, she says that it feels
amazing to know that the organization is making a difference in the lives of the
people in Puerto Princesa. “Knowing that women are able to choose the spacing
and number of their children and that our pregnant clients will deliver their
babies safely in the presence of our nurses and midwife, and that we are
helping teens stay in school and avoid unplanned teen pregnancies and provide a
lot of fulfillment,” she says.
