UP Students conduct PRA for Batong Malake Women’s Brigade

A group of Development Communication students from UP Los Baños recently visited the Batong Malake Barangay Hall to confer with the officers of the Women’s Brigade during their weekly meeting.

The organization was chosen as the group’s partner community for a Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), which is a segment in the students’ interpersonal communication course.

Before the meeting started, the students established rapport with the officers by conducting a short interview about the organization and its members. According to the Vice President of the organization, the Women’s Brigade had more than 300 members across Batong Malake, most of which were unregistered.

The members opened up about different issues that they were currently facing, so after conversing a little more about their plans and challenges, the students facilitated the organization’s officers through a problem ranking and a problem analysis where they identified their most urgent issues and its causes.

Most of the members recognized membership and attendance as one of the organization’s biggest challenges. As a women’s group, some of the officers had taken the initiative to learn and teach about different skills such as rag making and formulation of their own dishwashing soaps in order to help the women in their community make money. However, there were very few women who were willing to take their time to attend their organization meetings and even fewer who were willing to learn the skills they were offering to teach.

After attempting to identify the root of the issue, the organization members acknowledged that one of the biggest reasons why most women cannot participate in community activities is because of their family commitments and poor time management.

They realized that this issue is crucial and must be addressed immediately because if their organization remains stagnant, they might get dissolved before they can help the women in their community.

The group took note of the mentioned challenges, and assured the members that they will come back during another session in order to aid them in addressing the organization’s membership and attendance issue.