KAPWA KO, MAHAL KO

UC Nursing CESDEV, in the conduct of its Medical-Surgical-Dental-Optical Mission in Barangay Kalunasan tapped the Kapwa Ko, Mahal Ko Foundation, Inc. for the various services that they offered that will surely benefit the residents of our adopted barangay.

Kapwa Ko, Mahal Ko Foundation, Inc. is a non-governmental, non-profit organization working for the well-being of indigent people in our country, especially children afflicted with cancer. Through education and health care, Kapwa ko, Mahal Ko helps in raising the quality of life and instill in the minds of the destitute the nobility of human life.

Core Values
These core values are the quintessence and guiding principles that determine Kapwa Ko, Mahal Ko’s actions. The core values are our aim, a challenge that we seek to live and work to:
We are committed to the poor.
We value people.
We respond to the needs of the indigent patients.
We are committed to provide medications to child cancer patients.
We are committed to the poor.We are called to serve the neediest people of the earth; to relieve their suffering and to promote the transformation of their well-being. We seek to understand the situation of the poor and work alongside them.
We seek to facilitate an engagement between the poor and the affluent that opens both to transformation. We respect the poor as active participants, not passive recipients, in this relationship. They are people from whom others may learn and receive, as well as give. The need for transformation is common to all. Together we share a quest for compassion, peace and reconciliation, and healing a broken world characterized by poverty.
We value peopleWe regard all people as created and loved by God. We give priority to people before money, structure, systems, and other institutional machinery.
We act in ways that respect dignity, uniqueness, and intrinsic worth of every person - the poor and the sick. We practice a participative, open, enabling style in working relationships. We encourage the professional, personal, and spiritual development of our staff.
We Respond to the Needs of the Indigent PatientsThe resources at our disposal are not our own. They are a trust from God through benefactors and donors on behalf of the poor and the sick. We speak and act honestly.We are open and factual in our dealings with sponsors, project communities, and the public at large.
We are committed to providing medications to Child cancer PatientsWe are responsive to life-threatening emergencies where our involvement is needed and appropriate. We are committed to provide medications, through our limited resources, until the patient becomes stable. Then we will provide them and their families livelihood programs so that they can continue to live with dignity.
We do this from a foundation of experience and sensitivity to what the situation requires. We also recognize that even in the midst of crisis the destitute has a contribution to make.
We are responsive in a different sense where deep-seated and often complex economic and social deprivation calls for sustainable, long-term development.

For more information about Kapwa Ko, Mahal Ko Foundation, INc., please watch the YouTube video posted below.

KAPWA KO, MAHAL KO FOUNDATION INC. (CEBU)

BABY MANGROVE

The "baby mangrove" is captured by the very talented student nurse, Mr. JJPacres,and posted this on his Flickr account. This picture reminded UC Nursing CESDEV of the many occassions of Mangrove Tree Planting in Lilo-an, Cebu in cooperation with the Coastal Resources Management and Rehabilitation. Find below a slideshow prepared by one section about their mangrove planting activity.

PHILIPPINE MANGROVE LOSS

By Sergio A. Pontillas

In a region that leads the world in terms of mangrove forest cover, the Philippines now ranks last in Southeast Asia, according to a ranking official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

“It’s a pity that up to now, (our mangrove management program) consists only of planting trees,” Dr. Palis lamented.

Mangroves have been traditionally used for timber, firewood, medicine, food, and municipal fisheries. Other uses of mangroves are for settlements and salt production.

The December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean has proven that mangroves also serve as shoreline protection against destructive ocean waves, Palis said.

In recent years, mangrove forests have been cleared for the shrimp mariculture industry, which has an estimated annual farm gate value of nine billion dollars, he noted.

Since the 1970s, shrimp production from Asia has been steadily increasing from 26 million tons to 100,000 million tons in the 1980s, reaching a peak of 700,000 million tons in 1995, a DENR report said.

Alongside this increase in economic resource utilization is the steady loss of mangrove forests, estimated at a rate of 4,572 hectares per year. According to Palis, mangrove deforestation in the Philippines is 80 to 90 per cent, which is higher than the Asian deforestation rate of 60 to 70 per cent.

Other causes of mangrove loss, aside from aquaculture, are timber and charcoal production, human settlement, salt pond construction, industrialization, and pollution.

Across the country, the rapid decimation of mangroves due to fishpond conversion by virtue of the old Fisheries Code (PD 704) started in the 1970s during the Marcos Era.

Loan incentives provided by the Central Bank and Development Bank of the Philippines also contributed to the large-scale conversion of mangrove forests into fishponds, Palis said.

During the term of President Corazon Aquino from 1986 to 1992, numerous declarations were made for the protection of foreshore areas, and fishpond lease holders were required to plant mangroves.

The late 1980s also saw the widening of mangrove buffer zones, but contrary to the policy of mangrove forest protection, fishpond areas inside forestlands increased from 1,016 hectares in 1982 to 75,548 hectares in 1990.

A new trend in management policy was introduced during the financial crisis of the 1990s, when new regulatory mechanisms, access limitations and conversion initiatives in coastal management were strengthened.

Participation of civil society groups and local government units was seen as a vital component of mangrove forest protection.

MANGROVE ORIENTATION

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