BETTER HEALTH. The water refilling station in Calantiao village in Bobon, Northern Samar funded by the Department of Science and Technology. The water refilling station addresses water-related health concerns that affect most of their children. (Photo courtesy of DOST)
TACLOBAN CITY – The remote village of Calantiao in Bobon, Northern Samar is awarded as the best Community Empowerment through Science and Technology (CEST) area by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).
DOST Eastern Visayas regional CEST coordinator Ramil Uy said on Wednesday the village will represent the region in the national search on Nov. 25, 2023 at the Iloilo Convention Center in Iloilo City.
Calantiao was chosen to be part of the program after the DOST main office pledged to the Office of the President to support programs and projects in communities previously influenced by the New People’s Army and being monitored by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
“We want to address the socio-economic issues confronted by the village so that they will no longer be influenced and give support to the left-leaning group,” Uy told the Philippine News Agency.
Nilda Sapatos, Calantiao village chief, said they received three projects from the DOST CEST worth PHP500,000 in 2021 for the setting up of a rice mill, a water refilling station, and Starbooks.
Sapatos said the rice mill addressed local farmers' woes of high cost of transportation when transporting their unhusked rice to the nearest milling station.
She said, they usually pay PHP70 per sack to transport their produce.
Aside from the cost of transportation, they also need to pay PHP4 for the milling of each kilogram of rice.
“Now that we already have a rice mill in our village, farmers only spend PHP3 per kilogram for the milling process,” Sapatos added.
The water refilling station, on the other hand, addressed issues about water-related health concerns that affect most of their children.
Sapatos recalled that the last time they had cases of diarrhea was in 2019.
The refilling station gets water from the PHP4.8 million water system project funded under the 2021 Local Government Support Fund – Support for the Barangay Development Program.
The third DOST project in the community is the Starbooks or the Science and Technology Academic and Research-Based Openly-Operated Kiosks.
It is a stand-alone information source designed to reach those with limited or no access to science and technology information resources.
The project provided science, technology, and innovation-based content in various formats to students and other constituents in remote and economically challenged schools and communities across the country.
The kiosk contains hundreds of thousands of digitized science and technology resources in various formats (text and video/audio) placed in specially designed “pods” set in a user-friendly interface.
“Our village is thankful to the DOST for the three CEST projects that they had given us because of its great impact on the lives of our people,” Sapatos said.
Calantiao is an upland village in Bobon, which is accessible through a single motorcycle ride for more than an hour from the town center.
The village is also identified by the Philippine Army as a beneficiary of a community support program as one of the areas in Northern Samar previously affected by armed conflict. (PNA)
