Paayo Ta! Youth Vaccine Champions from GenSan
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What is your initiative about (problem, solution)? Who are the people behind the initiative?
Gensan Bakuna is a web-based database which contains information about the schedules, locations, and vaccines available in General Santos City. In doing so, we hoped to solve the problem of lack of vaccine accessibility within the city through strengthening information dissemination.
This project is a self-directed project by team Paayo Ta! done alongside MakeSense Philippines’s Imagining Healthy Futures and in collaboration with TAPAT Gensan, City Public Health Office, City Public Information Office, and the Information Communication Technology Department of Gensan. We’re a group of five friends in high school who are all studying health science courses in different schools.
How did it start? What is your reason for starting this initiative?
It started from seeing the IHF project newsletter! We really resonated with the idea of creating impact within our city sustainably, so we gathered as a group and decided we wanted to join the program.
When it comes to starting the project, Gensan was one of the cities with the highest cases of COVID, and we had really strict quarantine protocols. While brainstorming for the project, we knew that we wanted to help out with the vaccination efforts. The first thing we realized we had in common ground was that none of us knew where to get vaccines within the city.
When we tried to specifically think of our project idea, our initial go-to assumption and solution focused into vaccine education. Therefore, we taught about vaccination campaigns, posters, and more. However, from our first research, we realized that most people already actually knew of the importance of vaccines, but, validating our first realization, there were gaps in the dissemination in itself. From this, we sought for a solution which was intuitive, feasible for our resources, and easily done in a remote set-up–which gave birth to Gensan Bakuna.
What is your social mission? What is your vision for your initiative? Who are your beneficiaries?
Our social mission is to make health security more accessible for the Filipinos through strengthening information dissemination.
We envision it to be a sustainable platform for people from Gensan to use for vaccines. In the long run, we hope to hand over the technical stack to the authorities of Gensan to make it integrated into their system.
[Our beneficiaries are] the vaccine population of General Santos City.
What were your milestones? What were your challenges?
Milestones
Our group was initially very lost; so when we were able to talk about our initiative with the city’s COVID-19 response task force, we immediately knew that it was our first milestone. From there, we continued to work towards achieving more milestones–creating connections with the different involved offices in GenSan, obtaining our needed information, launching our website, and updating content. These were the rewarding achievements that kept us excited and passionate about what we do!
Challenges
The biggest challenge that we had to face was our collective fear of failure. Frankly, it sounds cliche but we believe that this is something that every organized body feels about their initiative at some point. That’s why we were so glad to receive guidance from the amazing team of Makesense Imagining Healthy Futures because they really helped us break down our seemingly big and unattainable goal into smaller achievable tasks. Once the fear was out of the way, we gained the confidence to believe that we can overcome any challenges that may face us. We find it funny now that we went through many challenges in the duration of our project; it’s like the universe rewarded our confidence with situations to prove our persistence. These challenges included communication difficulties with the offices we were coordinating with, our inability to perform on-ground surveys of our community, and the fact that some of our members got sick with COVID-19. It was difficult, yes, but we are glad to say that we were able to overcome these struggles.
What did you learn from building this solution for your community?
A lot of things honestly! We hope this doesn’t seem to be rambly.
Our biggest learning has to be the realization that we can—we can organize an initiative, we can create a solution that might address a community need, and we can aspire for a big goal and be able to reach it.
More than anything, this experience has provided us with a more nuanced understanding of the issues that our community faces and where we stand with regards to these problems. Designing a solution for one problem and seeing it come to life has provided us with the confidence that we can do it again, and that..
We are active participants of a society that needs us to step up and offer solutions.
As vaccine champions, what is your message for the youth, government, and the Filipino people?
Vaccines work. They are not the final solution to the pandemic, but they provide enough protection for a large percentage of the population to buffer the spread of the virus. We believe that getting vaccinated must be a conscious act of solidarity with every member of the community because when you are safe, it is likely that those who encounter you are safe as well.
Getting vaccinated is an act of inclusivity and kindness because it also protects those who are immunocompromised, those who physically cannot get a vaccine, and also those who do not share the same access to healthcare as you.
Finally, it will allow our healthcare workers both the figurative and literal space to breathe because the more of us who are vaccinated, the less likely it will be for the number of cases to spike to the numbers that we reached at the height of the pandemic. We hope these reasons can convince everyone that if they are able to, regardless if they are already in perfect health, to get vaccinated.
How can people support you?
Right now, we’re on a mini-hiatus due to school! But we’d love to extend our impact by imparting with people how to emulate the project. If you’re interested in this or would love to talk about the project, message Chloe at [email protected].
● Website: https://gensan-bakuna.com/