Stairway to success

THREE NEW graduates of the Parañaque National High School (PNHS) may have found the ladder that will bring them closer to their dreams.

Aizel May Dizon, 17; Febe S. Bico, 17; and Melanie Lanticse, 16, have just started the two-year midwifery course of the “ladderized” curriculum of the University of the Philippines Manila School of Health Sciences on its Palo, Leyte, campus.

The program allows students to move up continuously from the two-year midwifery course to a higher level of training, learning skills and earning credentials every time that will qualify them for corresponding more specialized jobs.

The ladderized curriculum will enable them to obtain a medical degree eventually if that is their ultimate goal.

The three teenagers were among a group of 20 from PNHS chosen by the global healthcare company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to participate in its Bridge to Employment (BTE) program.

Launched in 1992 and currently implemented in 10 countries BTE was designed to encourage students, who were at risk of stopping their schooling after high school, to try to pursue higher education, specifically, to consider careers in the healthcare field.

BTE was meant to help stem the high dropout rate while addressing the shortage of healthcare workers by making the underprivileged youth realize their own potential, and guiding them towards careers in the healthcare industry.

The three-year program aimed to help increase the number of students pursuing and completing higher education; and increase the number of students pursuing a healthcare career.

The Philippines, the latest country—and the first in Asia—to implement the BTE program, also hoped to show participants the many employment possibilities in the local healthcare industry so they would pursue training that would get them jobs here instead of opting for expensive degree programs in the hope of being hired by foreign employers.

Beyond the blueprint

Mary Grace N. Gervacio, J&J Philippines human resources and contributions director, said the local BTE program was also the first to offer scholarship grants. It was a recognition of the fact that socio-economic realities in the Philippines required going beyond the original blueprint of BTE.

Lucilla G. Maruhom, executive assistant, said for the BTE implementation here, J&J partnered with PNHS, the school closest to their local headquarters; the UP Manila School of Health Sciences, with which some employees had close links; and the city health office, whose head worked with J&J before, among others. They tapped World Vision Development Foundation Inc., with Ma. Robel V. Luna as BTE project coordinator, to monitor program implementation.

For the initial BTE group of 20 fourth year students, it was like being given a chance to look into the future and see what life could hold in store for them.

Between September 2010 and April this year, the students visited health centers/medical institutions, the University of the Philippines Manila, and the J&J facilities in Parañaque. They listened to healthcare and medical professionals talk about their work, received advice from J&J staff about working for a healthcare company, and walked the halls of the decades-old UP Manila to hear academics about and get a feel of what training in the healthcare field involved.

Aside from the mentoring, the 20 participants got involved in the actual work through the internship component of the program, helping professionals in healthcare centers attend to clients, visiting communities when home-to-home visits were called for.

Desire to serve

For Dizon, Bico and Lanticse—and apparently for the rest of the group, as well—the experience achieved what J&J and its partners hoped for. They were imbued with the desire to go into the healthcare field and to serve their communities.

Dizon, who said she had always dreamed of becoming a surgeon so she could help people in their neighborhood, was happy to have validated her lifelong conviction that she could do more for other Filipinos as a health worker.

The BTE experience, she said, “opened her eyes to the need of her community (for health and medical care)” and she learned that money could not bring as much “enjoyment, fulfillment and satisfaction” as being able to help those in need.

Like Dizon, Bico’s childhood ambition was to become a surgeon, specifically a thoracic surgeon after watching one such professional on a television show. Although a cousin offered to help her after high school, her mother suggested she might be better off just getting married.

But for Bico that was the easy way out. “Madaling makakuha ng asawa (It is easy to get a husband),” she said. The BTE experience, and the scholarship offered her afterwards, strengthened her resolve to finish college. The internship alone was already satisfying, she said. She dismisses the idea of going overseas, no matter what kind of skills she gets, because she wants “to show that I can be successful” without leaving the country.

Lanticse said their internship at the health centers made her feel so helpless that there was nothing she could do for those people who came to seek assistance. They could only try to make the waiting less stressful for the patients as health workers attended to other people. The experience, she said, affected her “personally, emotionally and spiritually” and gave her a better idea of what health centers do.

Despite learning first-hand how difficult it was to work in a community hospital or health center, Lanticse was confident she would be able to cope with all the work, no matter how difficult, “Kung masaya ako na makapagligtas ng buhay (If I am happy to have saved a life),” she said.

The three J&J scholars are undaunted by the idea of going to school in Leyte, away from their families. For Dizon and Lanticse, Leyte is not really unchartered territory as their families trace their roots from the province. It will, in fact, be a chance to strengthen bonds with relatives who have remained there.

The J&J scholarship covers the two-year midwifery course and involves a two-year service in their communities. But the three young women are determined to return to Palo just as soon as they can and have the means to climb the “ladder” until they earn medical degrees so they can be of even greater help to their communities.