Sex-Ed by Text Hotline (SET)

My friend Kelly, a Peace Corps Volunteer here, has co-created a Sex-Ed by Text hotline (SET) with another volunteer Aaron Simmons. Below, is her explanation of the program and a request for help. It's a fascinating use of technology to educate and help people, and it's super-cheap to support it's continuation.

SET is a cellphone number that Filipinos can send text (SMS) messages to and get reproductive health & sex-ed information. Here's how it works:

A curious Filipino sees one of our flyers and sends a text message to the SET number. The flyers advertise 'keywords' that can be texted to the number. When SET receives a keyword, it replies automatically (there's no human sitting at a cellphone) with information related to that keyword. For example, if someone texts "hivaids" to SET, it will reply with
Txt hivaids(space)# frm list:
1-wat is hiv
2-facts o hiv
3-effects o hiv
4-wat is aids
5-facts o aids
6-treatmnt
7-transmision
8-preventn9-whos@risk
Then the user can choose from this menu by replying with the keyword. For example, "hivaids 1″. Then SET will respond with:
Wat is hiv-Virus found only in humans dat mainly affects d immune system (d part of d body dat protects u frm disease & sickness)

That's all fine and great, you may be thinking, but what problem is this solving? With nearly %60 of the population consisting of youth and over 2million being sexually active I'd say it's a big problem. Not to mention that sex education is almost non-existent in the Philippines. It's a cultural thing– you just don't talk about sex. (Sort of. While you get bastos (naughty/dirty) jokes that make Kanos (Americans) blush, and amazing amounts of near-striptease style dancing on television, you can't really talk about how it all works.) After all, this is the country that banned condoms in Manila. And where a pharmacist said they don't stock condoms because "we are pro-life". Despite all this, there's (obviously) a huge amount of curiosity on the part of young people. And with looming crises (out-of-control population growth, a pending AIDS epidemic), education about sex is a real need.

By the way, while all this stuff about "texting" may sounds strange to you back in the States, it's definitely not to Filipinos. Texting took off here years ago– its just part of the culture now, to the point that the Philippines is frequently called the Text Capital of the World. (After having lived here for two years, I [Kelly] now have texting skills unrivaled by anyone in America older than 12.)

SET has been up for about two and a half months, and is advertised in Baguio City. It gets roughly 20 texts per day, and has sent out over 2,000 response texts.

Our next big challenge is having SET continue after we leave. CFSPI gave SET a three-month budget to start with, but they are having their own funding issues and won't be able to continue to fund it directly.

Which is where you come in. SET is currently budgeted for php2000 ($50) per month, which is pretty cheap when you think about its potential impact. We've set up a donations page to make it easy, so if you're feeling generous, please send a few dollars SET's way by clicking here (or going to http://www.freewebs.com/sexedtext/donate.htm). A few dollars here (we're talkin' $5, $10, $20) goes a long way. I appreciate any amount you can donate! And please feel free to send this information on to any of your family or friends who might be up for helping out, thanks so much!

You can get more info about SET here, as well as information about CFSPI (the sponsoring NGO) by clicking here.

After Two Months in the Consuelo Home...

Joke lang! I had a face-making contest with the girls, and I wanted to inspire them. Inspirational is definitely the word that comes to mind looking at this picture, wouldn't you say?

(By the way, "lang" means only in Tagalog. I've gotten so used to hearing this way of saying "just kidding" that I've now gotten used to saying it. I'm takin' it back to Hawaii with me.)

Paalam (goodbye)

This trip has been the most rewarding of my life: invaluable experiences, genuine, random interactions with locals, and great new friends. While I won’t be leaving the Philippines until April, the goodbyes are fast approaching.

There used to be more tears, but now goodbyes are a familiar scene for me. I travel, I move, I have friends in the military… these conditions have meant at least one permanent separation from a very close friend every year since I graduated from college in 2003. Sounds confusing, but point is: I've gotten good at this. That’s not counting all the many see-you-laters before my trips or the until-next-times after friendly visits. The last looks at airports, bus stops, train stations—I got used to them. And my friends’ similar lifestyles coupled with the communication technologies of cell phones and internet meant fewer tears all around.

This Baguio goodbye will be a little harder. I’ve made the usual “foreigner friends,” whom, large thanks to Facebook, will be easy to keep in touch with and hopefully meet somewhere and some-when again. But I’ve also become friends with Filipinos who don’t move or travel a lot. This allows for one reunion possibility: I come back… which is not unlikely, just uncertain.

And of course, the goodbye to the girls will be the biggest challenge to my farewell expertise. For three months we shared a house, our meals, our thoughts, our feelings—we’re “ates.” I love them very much, and they’ve made their mutual affections for me obvious. And in this shaky situation, I’ve lost my communication-age crutches: many of them don’t have email, or phones, or Facebook, and snail mail letters will be strained by language and changing addresses. I’m not sure I’ll be able to find them when I return if they’ve moved on to new homes, as is the ultimate goal of the program. So here I am facing my most loving (read: giving) connection to see it become the most severed. So as in the days before farewells were routine, I feel a lump in my throat and water filling my eyes. This one’s gonna be tough.

The Current Plan (explore the Philippines):
Mar. 17 – Sagada, Batod, Banaue (northern Luzon) with other foreign volunteer friends
Mar. 23 – San Carlos (Negros, Visayas) with the Honolulu Rotary club to help build a training center
Mar. 29 – Boracay (Panay, Visayas) with Aussie friend Becky to party as if it were my birthday… hey, wait…
Apr. 4 – Return to Honolulu, HI at 7:30PM, magically arriving a few hours before my departure from Manila. Silly international dateline.

Gratitude

There are few things as astonishing and humbling as the generosity of the poor. Last weekend, I went to rural parts of Naguilian with the Healthy Start program to deliver more formula to underweight babies. The subsistance lifestyle is increasingly difficult as more people move to the cities causing the farming communities to shrink. We met one woman with six children who makes 45 pesos a week--just over one dollar. Before we left from delivering the formula, she insisted that we take a full bag of sweet potatoes and another full bag of green beans. After visiting a half-dozen more families, we had enough fresh, organic vegetables to open a produce stand. It was a little difficult to take food from people who had so little, but it meant so much to them that they could thank us for coming out there that it would have been impossible to refuse.
Foreign volunteers in general sometimes face accusations of pity, superiority, imperialism, ignorant meddling, and declarations of "we can handle our own problems." These sentiments are not entirely unjustified, and therefore, difficult to refute. But all the foreign volunteers I've met here in Baguio have recieved nothing but sincere thanks and praise from Filipinos: "it's great there are people like you," "thank you for what you do," "you have such big hearts"... Obviously, this response makes the whole experience even more rewarding.

Thinking back, it's highly appropriate that the first word I learned (and used) in Tagalog was salamat. It means thank you.