NGO hopes to turn every Filipino into a lifesaver - Safe, sound and not sorry
Inquirer + Published on page A23 of the July 10, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
WHAT CAN you do nowadays
with P100?
The amount, equivalent to a hundred text messages, can equip you with life-saving skills, courtesy of a nongovernment organization which wants to arm as many people as it can with the basic know-how to save lives.
At most, P100 is all that one has to pay to take the basic survival course being offered by the Emergency Resource Center Inc.(ERCi) Inc., which was created out of a need to teach Filipinos to be prepared for any calamity.
�What is P100 nowadays? The daily allowance of students for their cell phone load? Still, everybody is prone to accidents. And with the course, we can empower you in two hours. We can prepare you for natural emergencies, crime and terrorism, fire incidents, self-aid and first aid,� said
Louie Domingo, ERC vice president and operations director.
Country of lifesavers
The NGO was established in 2000 by a group of individuals with a common dream of making a lifesaver out of every Filipino. For who else should be experts in surviving natural and man-made calamities but a country whose citizens endure at least 20 typhoons every year and is home to as many active volcanoes?
The ERC �supports the philosophy that the illiterate, poor and the underdeveloped need not be deprived of appropriate, sustainable, self-reliant, life-saving resources, knowledge and technology.�
Specialized training
Toward this end, it offers a wide range of lessons on multi-hazard emergencies, from courses as basic as what to do during earthquakes and fire incidents, to more specialized training such as cabin crew defense for flight attendants and tactical medicine for soldiers engaged in combat.
But for the Filipino everyman, the ERC has just the right lesson -- Safety Awareness for Everyone! or SAFE! -- an information-packed course which it describes as an �awareness level program that promotes emergency preparedness through experiential education.�
�The point is, what�s your excuse now for not learning all of these? This is a perpetual need. Everybody needs to know about safety and security. There are times they (clients) can only afford P50. Then we adjust because we are an
NGO and we�re not so much in it for the money. As long as you are interested, we will teach you,� Domingo said.
Part of the fees the NGO collects for its courses is used to enhance its knowledge and technological resources and for compensating its 30 volunteers.
�We have to understand that an NGO is somehow run like a business which also has expenses. We want to pay experts, do proper research and see the latest cutting-edge technology which we could then share through our lessons,� added Domingo.
Four stations
In SAFE!, participants spend two hours going through four stations where they would encounter life-threatening
scenarios.
Station 1: Smoke Simulator
This station simulates a fire incident with participants placed in a room filled with nontoxic smoke, according to an ERC course brief.
�Participants learn how smoke (settles) at various heights and how to best take advantage of this phenomena. In addition, participants are exposed to the difficulties of navigating through the simulator due to limited vision, difficulty of breathing and general disorientation,� the ERC said.
Station 2: Multiple Casualty Simulator
Here, participants deal with persons suffering from injuries � a simulation of a situation that may arise following the collapse of a building or a bomb attack. The station comes complete with �simulated casualties�
with mock but realistic injuries meant to �evoke varied responses from participants.�
Station 3: Natural and man-made emergencies
In this station, students� skills at improvising are tested as they are asked to fashion tools for survival out of things at hand like their clothing, combs, belts and even their identification cards.
Station 4: Crime and Terrorism Station
Participants are taught survival skills in the urban setting, including self-defense in case of attacks, stampedes or tumultuous crowd situations like the dispersal of rallies or mass transit emergencies.
The best thing about the program, said Domingo, is that the ERC will bring the program to where you
are.
�We go to you, occupy a room, and teach. We just try to make it super-reachable for our fellow Filipinos,� he added.
One of a kind
Domingo said he�s proud to belong to an NGO which is the only one of its kind in the country. �Our mission is to reach 45,000 barangays (villages) in the country and provide appropriate technology to anybody, everybody, which they can use in cases to prevent turning an incident into an emergency,� he pointed out.
To reach its goal, the ERC has traveled to various provinces to bring lessons on safety and security to small towns. The organization carries out this mission through its NEST (Neighborhood Emergency Services Team) program, a course
that taps natives in an area by turning them into emergency first responders after 40 hours of training in emergency communications and preparedness, first aid, fire protection, earthquake and flood safety, search and rescue, disaster relief and rehabilitation and health monitoring, among others.
Empowerment
�It�s all about empowering communities. We teach 25 to 35 people to handle their own emergencies -- like trees swaying over power lines which could be solved by asking government to cut it. It serves the whole barangay because anybody who needs help in any emergency, the team we had taught could address that,� said Domingo.
The NEST program has been taught for free in towns in Palawan, Davao and barangays in Los Ba�os, Laguna.
For the organization, there is no greater reward than being able to reach out and share lifesaving knowledge with those willing to learn. Yes, even greater than that P100 bill.
�It feels so good for you to have helped a group or a person get prepared for anything and they come back to you and tell you that what you had taught them helped them save lives. All they had to do was give us the time to share it with them,� Domingo said.
