Dad’s Magic Hands: Promoting Hygiene Practices While Challenging Gender Norms in Care Work

The Hygiene and Behavior Change Coalition (HBCC) Project launched the Mum’s Magic Hands (MMH) program in the municipalities of Sultan Sa Barongis and Shariff Saydona Mustapha, Maguindanao in the middle of 2020. It was a response designed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 in vulnerable communities through capacity building on COVID-19 prevention and management, care sessions and hygiene promotion sessions. In Sultan Sa Barongis alone, a total of 1,570 participants successfully graduated from the MMH sessions and trainings conducted.

It was around July 2020 when the HBCC team started ground-working in one of the barangays of Sultan Sa Barongis. As the Barangay Secretary, Norodin Mangintas Mohamad, 26, received the team and became the immediate focal person at the onset of the project in Barangay Tugal. He recounted the apprehension he felt whenever new faces arrive in their Barangay during this time. He was unsure of the gravity of the pandemic and admitted that response efforts were limited in their area. Tugal was also among the remote Barangays with limited access to life-saving information about COVID-19.

To Norodin, becoming the focal person for the project was a new experience filled with many challenges. He admitted that safe sanitation is not regularly practiced in their community. Household chores were not considered a necessary part of a daily routine and, with no basic toilet for every household, open defecation is a common practice especially among children in their area.

MMH was originally intended for women community leaders but Norodin found it harder to engage women in the project because they were used to staying at home doing all the care work. So it was an unexpected surprise when at the first MMH Training, community leaders from Tugal who showed up were all men.

At the beginning of hygiene promotion sessions, MMH Champions or the “Dads” of Tugal also struggled with reading and understanding the module. Most members of the community had limited literacy and they were being presented with information that was either new to them or was a direct opposite of their current practices at home. Norodin was confronted with these realities during the MMH sessions but encouraged his fellow MMH champions to continue and build confidence together by staying with the program.

These MMH Champions are family members and multitaskers in their communities, either farmers or fishermen, with some being barangay officials or members of the Barangay Peace-keeping Action Team. Through the HBCC project, they have also become health champions leading trainings in their own communities on proper hygiene and sanitation, and COVID-19 management and prevention. They have families and livelihood to attend to but they did their best to cooperate and accommodate the scheduled MMH sessions and trainings.

The MMH Champions of Barangay Tugal veered away from the initial projection of the program and successfully surpassed the expected impacts of the project. Barangay officials observed the improved cleanliness in their community with some households even putting up their own toilets. Dads were leading the MMH Sessions and, because of gender sensitivity trainings and care sessions, are actively discussing stereotypes and gender norms as well as practicing shared care work in their households.

“Gusto ko ring maranansan ng mga kasama ko na lalake kung ano ba talaga ‘yung gawain ng mga babae. Na hindi lang ‘yung sinasabi lang sa kanila kasi na-e-experience nila.” [I wanted the Dads to learn and understand the actual load and responsibilities of women in the household; not because it was taught to them but because they experienced it.]

MMH sessions concluded last March 2021, but Norodin along with the other Dads continue to re-echo learnings and conduct sessions on proper hygiene and sanitation with small groups of children in their Barangay.###

This story is written by Yani Royulada and is part of the UNILEVER/DFID Hygiene Behaviour Change Coalition (HBCC) Project implemented by Oxfam, Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM), United Youth of the Philippines – Women (UnYPhil-Women), and Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS, Inc.) in Maguindanao.