Part of the objectives during the first immersion in the community is to establish rapport to the community people and formally introduce ourselves. Gaining the trust of the community people is one of the crucial tasks for us as a health volunteer, so that we can effectively assess and serve the health needs of our chosen community. One of the strategies that we planned aside from the house to house visits is to gather the community people as one, together with the barangay officials for us to be properly introduced. We personally invited every family on the grand day that we called “Bag-ong Dalaguete Get together”.
Though hopeful for the success of the grand day, we also prepared ourselves to accept failure in case only few will respond to our invitation, considering the distance of every purok in the barangay to the venue of the event and load of their everyday tasks. But the people proved us wrong and made us feel the delight of meeting and getting along with us. We can really see the smiles on their faces as we talk to them. With the very warm welcome that we felt, we considered the event a success..