TACLOBAN CITY– Homegrown Dettie Panis Salon and Spa opened its new branch on February 26 in front of Robinsons Place, offering youthful skin care as the new service.
Salon owner Demeter “Dettie” Panis said along with the new branch is the youth plus skin and laser center under the watch of her daughter Yohanne Kae S. Panis, a diplomate of Philippine Dermatological Society.
“We believe that beauty is a need. There’s no such thing as recession in beauty and I’ve proven than even in the aftermath of supertyphoon (Yolanda). A lot of people have been coming to our salon when we opened our Burgos branch 10 days after the disaster,” Panis said.
Among the guests were couple Engr. Eman Casal and Dr. Elvira Casal,former Ormoc City mayor Eric Codilla and wife, Julida; Rotary Club of Tacloban District governor Peter Rodriguez and Rotary Club of Kandaya president Caroline Lee.
The newest branch is specifically located at the ground floor of JGC Building in Marasbaras, fronting Robinsons Place.
The salon has been known for investing human resources by sending staffs to trainings in Manila and abroad. Before Yolanda, there were six Dettie Panis Salon and Spa branches in Tacloban and in Ormoc City. More than three months after the typhoon struck, five branches are now operational.
Two of salon’s smaller branches were heavily damaged by storm surges and subsequent looting incidents.
TACLOBAN CITY- Leyte provincial administrator Vincent Emnas is pinning high hopes that student-athletes from the Leyte Sports Academy (LSA) would figure prominently in this year’s Palarong Pambansa.
This after the LSA-honed athletes made strong showing during the recently-held Batang Pinoy 2014 staged in Bacolod City.
Among the LSA-trained athletes that reaped honors was Karen Janario, 14, who won several gold medals in athletics.
Janario is among the 40 athletes from the sports academy who would be compete for the Palarong Pambansa to be held in Laguna this summer.
And as parts of the preparation, the athletes would undergo rigorous trainings to ensure that they would win medals during the national games, Emnas said.
He said that student-athletes who would compete in swimming would train in Manila considering that the swimming pool at the LSA was damaged just like the other facilities during supertyphoon Yolanda.
They are to leave first week of March for the extensive training.
Emnas said that they are proud with the LSA-trained athletes considering the fact that despite of what they have experienced due to the supertyphoon, they still able to deliver during the Batang Pinoy competitions, citing particularly Janario who was named as one of the most valuable players during the competition.
The administrator said that the performances of the LSA-trained athletes only proves that they are getting the proper training, enough for them to compete not only in the regional level but even in the national or international levels.
The provincial government brought the students to Manila days after the supertyphoon hit Tacloban not only to debrief them but for further trainings.
TACLOBAN CITY- Prisoners at the Tacloban City Jail are now facing scarcity of their daily rations, particularly on rice.
This was revealed by Chief Inspector Rill Sono, warden of the said prison facility who said that he is thankful that the Department of Social Welfare and Development has provided them with sacks of rice to meet their demands.
According to him, with more than 500 prisoners presently detained at the Tacloban City Jail, they need at least seven sacks of rice a day.
Rice supply in Tacloban has become scarce after the city was devastated by supertyphoon Yolanda with majority of its residents relies on their rice needs to the DSWD.
He added that the National Food Authority could not give them the needed supplies of rice as he added that they tried to resort other means like getting their rice needs in Baybay City.
However, procuring their rice needs in Baybay City would entail additional cost to them, Sono said during the February 18,2014 meeting of the Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council held at the Leyte Sports Complex(Grandstand), this city.
Sono said that after the massive typhoon, their rice supply was depleted and it was the DSWD that provided them 200 sacks of rice.
TACLOBAN CITY – The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) committed to assist the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in helping out agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) in heavily-damaged agrarian reform communities (ARCs) in Eastern Visayas rise from being shattered by super-typhoon “Yolanda”.
About eight ARCs in Leyte and Eastern Samar provinces covering nine pilot barangays, according to DAR Regional Director Eliasem Castillo, have already been validated by the CRS and included in their list which will benefit more than 4,000 farmers.
These areas, he added, are in Barangay San Jose in Palo; Barangay Lapay in Tanauan; and Barangays Malbog and Capangihan in Tolosa, all in Leyte province.
In the province of Eastern Samar the areas are in Barangay Coticot in Giporlos; Barangay Bulusao in Lawa-an; Barangay Sta. Rosa in Balangiga; Barangay Labtic in Quinapondan; and Barangay Siguinon in Salcedo.
Castillo said that this non-government organization (NGO) readily responded to their call to include ARCs in their assistance operation in the process of DAR’s preparation of the restoration and rehabilitation plan for these areas.
However, it was emphasized by CRS operations manager Terry Tuazon, that they will only be assisting farmers in coconut areas to avoid duplication of similar aid extended by other organizations to rice farmers.
Tuazon explained that in order for these farmers to be able to start rehabilitating their lots, CRS will provide financial assistance in clearing out debris brought by the typhoon.
The farmers are required to form into groups with 15 members and help one another clear (and plant if seeds/seedlings are available) 15 lots in 15 days.
Each farmer will be paid P3,900 for the 15-day work at P260 per day.
In addition, Tuazon said, each farmer will also get a P1,000 worth of voucher that could be used in procuring farm tools, seeds/seedlings and fertilizers at accredited stores.
Earlier, Castillo said, PCA has committed coconut seedlings and camote cuttings for the rehabilitation of typhoon-ravaged areas.
But Tuazon said that farmers could also plant vegetables as intercrops to coconuts for additional income.
Meanwhile, DAR’s Bureau of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Development (BARBD) Assistant Director Ma. Elena Cabañes introduced to the ARB organizations in these ARCs the vermiculture as additional livelihood for them where they can recycle the debris as feeds for the worms thru a shredding machine.
If the farmers would be interested, DAR will provide 30 kilos of worms for every ARC and facilitate the sourcing out of the shredding machine from an international organization. (JOSE ALSMITH L. SORIA)
BUILD FORWARD. A competition among architectural students in the country to design buildings and houses resilient to strong typhoons and earthquake was launched by property developer Ortigas and Co. In photo are the company’s sustainability and corporate communications supervisor Jaymelyn Nikkie Uy and this paper reporter Sarwell Meniano. (PHOTO BY: TOTEX ARCUENO)
BUILD FORWARD. A competition among architectural students in the country to design buildings and houses resilient to strong typhoons and earthquake was launched by property developer Ortigas and Co. In photo are the company’s sustainability and corporate communications supervisor Jaymelyn Nikkie Uy and this paper reporter Sarwell Meniano. (PHOTO BY: TOTEX ARCUENO)
TACLOBAN CITY – The number of severely malnourished children in Yolanda hit-areas in the Visayas fell short to the expectation of international humanitarian groups, raising concern on how to utilize all the $10 million foreign donations for life-saving nutrition interventions.
Megan Gayford of the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and Yolanda response nutrition cluster coordinator, said that there were only 2,702 preschool children suffering acute malnutrition in the three Visayas regions, less than half than their 6,000 expected populations.
“One of our main concerns is where not finding the number of malnourished children. The nutrition cluster planned to find 6,000 in three Visayas regions affected by typhoon, but when we look at the result of rapid assessment, only few are severely malnourished children,” Gayford said.
For the recently concluded Rapid Nutrition Assessment, foreign groups found 2,702 malnourished children under five years old in storm-stricken areas. Of the total, 2,332 were moderately underweight and 370 were severely malnourished.
The survey covered the provinces of Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Cebu, Eastern Samar, Leyte, and Samar
“Some 40% of severely and moderately malnourished children were already admitted for treatment. We have to address this concern immediately before the situation gets worse,” Gayford said.
“We intended to find half of the projected number of malnourished children after the typhoon. Now that we did not find a lot, there are some questions coming out on how to spend the money. We have to wait for result of SMART (Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions) survey and calibrate our targets,” Gayford explained.
SMART is an inter-agency initiative launched in 2002 by a network of organizations and humanitarian practitioners. It is a systematized approach to provide critical, reliable information for decision-making, and to establish shared systems and resources for host government partners and humanitarian organizations.
Gayford head admitted that they will encounter constraints in spending donations for nutrition response since the actual number of underweight is way below than the projected estimates.
The Unicef is now implementing a $10 million provision of critical preventive and live-saving nutrition interventions to children under 5 years, pregnant and lactating women affected by the storm.
Of the $10 million budget, $7.5 million is intended for nutrition technical and operational assistance, $1.76 million nutrition response supplies, and P740,740 for indirect program support costs.
As of this week, 99% of the funding requirements have been donated by major donors such as the governments of United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Norway, and Denmark.
On top of the Unicef-led initiative, ACF International and World Food Programme are also seeking $2 million and $3.02 million funds, respectively for nutrition interventions.
TACLOBAN CITY- Their intention was only to help four of the members of their organization whose families back home also suffered Yolanda’s wrath but the Tahiti-based Filipino organization ended up helping others who are still suffering from the aftermath of the supertyphoon.
Seeing the devastation personally was the reason why they decided to help their non-members as they could not afford not to extend assistance to those who were affected by the storm, Miguel Pedron said.
Pedron is the president of the Filipino Association in Tahiti-French Polynesia, composed of over 100 Filipinos working in Tahiti whose population of over 180,000 is less than compare to Tacloban’s more than 220,000 people, considered the ground zero of the typhoon.
“All we want was just to extend help to our four members whose respective families were affected by Haiyan (the international name of Yolanda). But seeing ourselves the massive devastation it caused and those affected by it, we cannot afford not to extend help to other victims,” the 64 year old Pedron said.
Pedron said that he never saw such a massive devastation caused by a natural disaster wherein everything his eyes could laid on were nothing but destructions whose magnitude was unparallel.
The group will provide livelihood assistance to the victims in the hope that they would, in turn, help other victims.
The fund that the group used to help Yolanda victims was sourced from the solicitations they made among the 100 Filipino now living in Tahiti, the largest island of French Polynesia in the southern Pacific Ocean.
“We went to television and radio stations and newspapers in Tahiti City to solicit funds to maximize our campaign to raise funds which we intend to give to the victims of the typhoon,” Pedron said.
They also put up boxes in the shopping malls and churches where donors could place their donations. And the response was “moving and overwhelming” as they were able to collect about P1 million in less than a week.
Also, the country’s airline company, the Air Tahiti Nui, provided them free tickets when they informed the company that they would travel to the Philippines to provide assistance to the typhoon victims.
“The people of Tahiti are such a giving and generous people. They never think twice in giving us their monies when they learn that we are raising funds for the typhoon victims here,” Pedron said.
The amount that they raised was the amount that they brought to the country for the victims. With the massive scale of the typhoons resulting to millions of people affected, the amount raised by them was not just enough, Burca admitted.
“That is why, we will do another fund raising and return here once we have raised enough,” she said. They plan to return to this city any time next year.
Pedron was joined by Mary Clare Navarro, the group secretary and Joyce Burca, its information officer, during their visit in Tacloban City to carry out their mercy mission.
