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In line with the government’s thrust on Responsible Parenthood as an important component of the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program, the Commission on Population (POPCOM) has been continuously intensifying the campaign for responsible parenthood and natural family planning in all regions throughout the country.
Now on its third year of implementing the Responsible Parenthood-Natural Family Planning (RP-NFP) program nationwide, the Responsible Parenthood Movement (RPM) is at the center of the celebration of the 2009 National Population Congress on November 25. The theme “Sa tamang agwat ng panganganak, pamilya ay aangat” aptly embodies Responsible Parenting as it complements the organization of couples who have been oriented on responsible parenthood and fertility awareness. To date, the RPM have enlisted about 303,399 couples nationwide, mostly from food poor provinces. This figure translates into 11,641 barangays out of the 77 provinces covered nationwide.
The Responsible Parenting Movement (RPM) is a strategy in carrying out the campaign to organize couples at the barangay level to attend RPM classes. RPM classes are 8-hour sessions on responsible parenting, fertility awareness, and natural family planning.
In the 2009 National Population Congress, RPM implementation in the regions will be put on exhibit. The Congress will serve as a venue to recognize the best innovations of the regions, which contributed to the success of the campaign. Three of these initiatives will be recognized, citing the strong alliance between POPCOM and the LGUs as well as POPCOM and faith-based organizations.
The campaign has been gaining support from Local Government Units (LGUs) and Faith-based groups as they manifest their participation in the 2009 National Population Congress to witness the gains of the program.
Representatives from various Non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as media partners have also provided support in seeding the concepts and knowledge about Responsible Parenting in far-flung areas, reaching as far as Indigenous Peoples’ communities.
The Responsible Parenthood program is POPCOM’s contribution to the Accelerated Hunger-Mitigation Program (AHMP) of the government which later led to the creation of the National Anti-Hunger Task Force, headed by Secretary of Health Francisco T. Duque III. The Task Force is made up of 29 national government agencies and faith-based organizations which implement one or more AHMP component programs in partnership with local government units.
Local Anti-Hunger Task Force from the regional and provincial levels were also created as a counterpart of the National Anti-Hunger Task Force. This has helped address the growing occurrence of hunger brought about by poverty in the country. The AHMP is a set of various strategies and mediations carried out by government agencies such as Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development, National Nutrition Council, among others, taking into consideration the law of supply and demand for food and other basic necessities of Filipino families.
The Commission on Population (POPCOM), for its part, is tasked to manage population growth which plays determinant factor to the demand side.
Thus, POPCOM encourages couples to plan their families and to practice birth spacing for at least three years, as it espouses the advocacy campaign on various modern natural family planning methods. Ultimately, the RP-NFP program envisions to reach its target of 4.2 million couples in 42,000 barangays nationwide.
Meeting this target, however, is in addition to the LGUs the autonomy to promote the whole range of family planning information and services which cater to the needs of their constituents.
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