Assessment of the La Salle volunteer program's intervention in Canumay, Antipolo

• Main Author: Melegrito, Ma. Lourdes F.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2006
• Subjects: Voluntarism; Student volunteers in social service; Student Counseling and Personnel Services
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/8882
• Institution: De La Salle University

The paper is an evaluation of the Lasalle Volunteer Program's project in Puroks Canumay and Casunugan in barangay San Ysiro within the municipality of San Jose, Antipolo, Rizal. The community-based project is a community development endeavor implemented by the Lasallian Volunteer Program and supported by the Lasallian District, which is an expression of the Lasallians integration with the poor communities. The project is basically aimed at responding to the immediate and long-term needs of the community. Its main strategy is to enhance the leadership capacity of the community leaders and well being of the members of the community through educational, spiritual, economic, health and environmental interventions. Having been managed for five years already. It is imperative that project interventions be assessed in order to gather data as basis for making necessary recommendations for project direction.This community-based project of the volunteers was evaluated in terms of poverty orientation, community participation, impact generation and sustainability. Specifically, the evaluation attempted to 1) describe the project and the evolution of its project interventions (inputs) to the community's poverty situation and identity its project outputs; 2) ascertain the extent of community participation; 3) determine the impact of the different project components; 4) analyze the factors that affect the project impact, and 5) find out the prospects of sustainability and project development. In terms of evaluation methodology, the evaluator applied documentation survey by reviewing, consolidating and analyzing the project documents, in-depth interviews of the key stakeholders and focused group discussions with the project beneficiaries and project implementers.The evaluation reveals that the project's goal is to improve the quality of lives of the people in the community through enhanced well-being manifested by literacy, improved leadership capacities and increased income of direct project beneficiaries. The education program has three components, namely, 1) Kabataan Mag-balik Aral, which aims to encourage children and youth to go back to school and avail of the education opportunities provided to them, 2) Basic Adult Literacy, which aims to provide opportunities for the adults to learn writing, reading and arithmetic, and 3) Teaching Aide Training for potential teaching aides. In order to support this intervention, three programs were also developed, namely, 1) Leadership Building and Development, which aims to enhance the capacities of community leaders by providing them with necessary skills and orientation; the community leaders act as the main agent in mobilizing the communities to participate in the education project of the Lasalle Volunteers; 2) Livelihood Program, which aims to provide livelihood opportunities for the members of the community; 3) Environmental Advocacy Program, to respond to environmental issues in the community brought about by illegal logging.