How community kitchens are kindling volunteerism among Ilonggos
ILOILO City – Our team chanced upon volunteer Nanette Espulgar, 45, bustling with her ladle and bowls at a daycare center-temporarily turned-community kitchen in Zone 9, Barangay San Juan, Molo district.
Since the onset of the pandemic last year, community kitchens have been serving love through hot meals to people troubled by lockdowns.
The Uswag (progress) Community Kitchens (UCK), a brainchild of Mayor Jerry Treñas, were set up in various barangays here.
Behind these kitchens were daycare workers like Nanette, parent-volunteers, supplemental feeding assistants, and barangay tanods, among others.
Nanette, together with two kitchen assistants, were busy preparing tinolang manok with munggo, kamote and eggplant that day.
They were just among the more or less 700 community kitchen volunteers in this city.
According to Nanette, it was her daily routine especially every time the city is placed under an enhanced community quarantine.
She has her own family to tend to, though, but Nanette managed her time between her obligations as a mother to six children, a daughter to her bedridden mother and as a UCK volunteer.
While she and her assistants – Razzel Pabiona and Rocel Ramos – are cooking, 75 to 80 empty bowls were queuing on the table waiting to be filled in with hot viand.
“Naanad naman kami kag nalipay nga nakabulig sa ila bala bisan sa sud-an lang nila,” said Nanette.
The positive feedbacks from the people keep them in the kitchen, she added.
She was also thankful to her husband Oliver, a barangay tanod, who was also assisting her every time.
For Nanette, who has served the barangay since 2013 as barangay staff – health worker first and a Barangay Nutrition Scholar – it was already a way of life to serve the community.
Meanwhile, City Social Welfare Office III Grace Centino, Molo’s district head and focal person of UCK, described their jobs as “tiring but fulfilling.”
“Kon mabatian mo man ang feedback nila nga gapasalamat sila sa community kitchen, nami ang feeling,” said Centino.
In March 2020, a week after the metropolis was placed under ECQ, the city government installed 240 UCKs hosted by 204 daycare centers and 37 barangay halls.
During ECQ time this year (July 20 until August), Centino said they reactivated 139 UCKs in the most affected, most populated barangays in the city.
At the operation center of UCK, Centino said they have 20 volunteers including her who do the monitoring, packing, segregation, and delivery distribution to every district office of the City Social Welfare and Development Office.
“From the district offices, we have district monitoring person nga naga secure sang distribution kag gina kuha ina sang mga daycare workers with their tanods or kagawad sakay sa ila mga barangay service motorcycle or multicab going na sa reactivated barangay UCKs,” Centino narrated.
Aside from UCK, the city government through the Iloilo City Community College, was also operating a community kitchen patrol, which on the other hand, serves the frontliners at the border control points and those at the various vaccination sites./PN
