PALO, Leyte-In its continuing advocacy and campaign to address various adolescent health and related sexuality issues and needs the young people of today are facing, the Commission on Population and Development (Popcom) will be establishing a teen center at the Carigara National Vocational School (CNVS) and the Information and Service Delivery Network (ISDN) for Adolescents in Carigara town.
Popcom through its Adolescent Health and Development (AHD) Program sees the need to provide a mechanism where it can further promote better quality health services for the adolescents which are responsive to the needs and protection of their rights. The teen center and the establishment of an ISDN for adolescents are among this mechanism.
The teen center will become the physical facility where adolescents can go for adolescent health information, entertainment, while the ISDN is the organizational linkage which will provide the needed adolescent health services.
The new teen center, to be launched at the CNVS on July 5, will serve as a resource of information, aid, skills building or simply a place of recreation or amusement for their in-school adolescents, as well as from other schools in the municipality of Carigara.
The proposed teen center will have available counselling, skills training, values formative skills, employment services, medical and dental health and even reproductive health services.
All these will be provided by the ISDN for Adolescents linkage such as the Rural Health Unit, Carigara District Hospital, the barangay health stations, Municipal Social Welfare Office, Municipal Population Office, Municipal PNP through its Women and Child Protection Desk, Youth Development Office, PESO, PhilHealth, SK Federation and the private and public secondary schools who have been linked to form part of the ISDN.
The ISDN, meantime, will become a network of facilities within municipality of Carigara that offers information, training, and core packages of health and social care services in an integrated and coordinated manner.
To firm up the partnership for the teen center and ISDN, a memorandum of agreement will be signed between Popcom VIII, CNVS, ISDN partners and the local government unit of Carigara through Mayor Eduardo Ong.
It was learned during the orientation and organizational meeting for the members of the ISDN that the municipality have a number of cases on teenage pregnancy, children in conflict with the low and a rising number of adolescents with sexually transmitted infections.
“With the establishment of a teen center, the young people can have facility they can go to while the ISDN links can ensure that the comprehensive needs of adolescents are addressed accordingly,” Reyan Arinto, Popcom information officer, stated during the meeting.
More school-based teen centers are set to be opened in other areas in the region this year and expected to be fully functional to provide greater, effective and sustained impact among target young audience.
(LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)
