Our Formation and Our Training

We recruited our new members from our schoolmates and classmates. Because we do our activities in our own schools, SUPACA is very visible in many of our school campuses. All high school scholars of the Share A Child are members of SUPACA. Young people in our schools are attracted to our organization and they want to join many of our activities. Our teachers support SUPACA because of our values lean strongly towards the development of our young people as good citizens and productive and contributing members of the community.

As a youth organization, we make our own plans and handle our activities. To become a member of SUPACA, we require our recruits to undergo orientations and trainings.

Leadership Training Seminar

We hold leadership training seminars in all of our school chapters every year for our new recruits. This is to train our members on the kind of leaders our organization needs as well as to enhance their potentials to become good leaders, to teach them the skills that a leader should posses and to be good followers too and to be responsible for all the projects that SUPACA has now and in the future.

We coordinate the schedule of the training with our new recruits and with their teachers and the school principal. Each of our leaders is assigned to take charge of a certain school and he or she, together with other leaders, conduct a series of meetings to plan the flow of activities and assign each member to the different task to be done in preparation for the training and for the training itself.

Our leaders constitute SUPACA’s pool of trainors and facilitators. They are responsible for the training design and serve as facilitators and resource persons in SUPACA trainings. Each training end with each school chapter making a plan of activities to be done by its members for the entire year The action plan is then presented to the SUPACA chapter adviser who then endorses it to the school guidance counselor and the principal.

Technologies of Participation

Because we recognize the right of the child and young person to participate in decision-making, we
practice a facilitative kind of leadership that is based or the principles of participation, teamwork, consensus building, creativity, reflection and action. The methods that we use to arrive at decisions are through group discussion, workshop and action planning. What skills we learn from those who came before us, we by to pass to others through the Technologies of Participation training. After the training, we are then given the chance to handle group discussions and apply and test out new skills.

Peer Education Training

SUPACA Members also undergo Peer Education training. This training aims to educate us about the different issues and concerns of the youth in our society, particularly that:

• Sexuality is a natural and healthy part of living. Sexuality includes physical, ethnical, spiritual, psychological and emotional dimensions.
• Every person has dignity and self-worth and each may express their sexuality in different ways.
• Sexual relationships should never be coercive, violent or exploitative.
• All children should be loved and cared for.
• All sexual decisions have effects and consequences.
• All persons have the right and obligation to make responsible sexual choices.
• Individuals and society benefit when children are able to discuss sexuality with their parents and/or trusted adults.
• Young people explore their sexuality as a natural process of achieving sexual maturity.
• Premature involvement in sexual behavior poses risks.
• Abstaining from sexual intercourse is the most effective method of preventing pregnancy and STDs/HIV.

Many of us come from conservative backgrounds and we advocate abstinence for young people. We do recognize that there are some of us are already sexually active and that we should be taught to practice safe sex and to be provided with information about services not only because we need to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases but most important of all, to prevent teenage pregnancies from occurring. As a child rights organization, we take a strong stand against abortion. The fetus in the womb is already living and, like all children, he or she has the right to live, to develop and to be protected.

Peer Counseling Training

Our peer counseling training is intended to arm us with the skills to help young people who are in crisis. As peer counselors, we need to look at ourselves first because our values and our attitudes may strongly affect the way we handle those of us in trouble and may send wrong signals, thereby worsening the problem instead of helping. For us, peer counseling is a very’ delicate and veiy important job and we need to build more skills before we feel we are qualified to handle it. What is important is that we knowhow to listen actively and to seek adult guidance when the problem is beyond our capacity to manage.

Trainings for Our Adult Mentors

Our adult mentors are the teachers and the guidance counselors in our schools. Each of our chapters has a teacher- adviser and s/he was invited, together with guidance counselors and other teachers to attend trainings so that s/he and the others will understand the work that we have
committed to do. Because we want to be able to reach out to out-of-school children and youth, our mother organization, the Share A Child Movement has invited GAD (Gender and Development) focal persons to framings for adults so that they could mentor young people in their barangays.