A Struggle Yet Ultimately a Victory: LoveYourself Cebu’s 2nd Year

written by Ryan Taborada

When LoveYourself Cebu celebrated its first anniversary, there was gloom in the air. It was during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when quarantine restrictions were at their strictest. There was an effort, of course, to make it as festive as possible, as the staff and the volunteers came together through the click of a Google Meet link. For over an hour, we bonded, asking each other how we were doing, how we were holding up, wishing to return to the time when we could be in each other’s presence like we had been during the hustle and bustle of our first year.

This time around, celebrating our 2nd anniversary, still through video conferencing, the vibe was much more lighthearted. We were still facing a global pandemic, but we'd adapted. It had been such a struggle of a year for the organization, but we were still here, intact.

About two months after our first anniversary celebrations, LoveYourself White House, was converted into a COVID-19 testing facility. However, that didn’t deter us from forging ahead. The organization launched Project Reach, a one-on-one outreach program that allowed volunteers assigned in specific areas in Cebu City to provide free HIV counseling and screening. Shortly after, LoveYourself White House we found a new home. From the Fuente area, we moved to #6 Avelino Morales St., Barangay Camputhaw, Cebu City, about five minutes away from the University of the Philippines - Cebu.

When quarantine restrictions started to loosen up, the new location started taking in clients and allowing volunteers to counsel by appointment.

In order to push further our HIV Awareness endeavors at a time when movement is still limited, we focused our efforts online. We held game nights on our Facebook page, live-streamed talk shows for National HIV Prevention Month in coordination with the team from Manila, and produced a three-part Halloween mini-series that garnered thousands of views. Towards the end of the year, we were finally able to go out there and hold an HIV Caravan. Members of Sangguniang Kabataan in Barangay Guadalupe tapped us to conduct HIV 101, a SOGIE seminar, and provide HIV counseling and screening in their gymnasium, with safety protocols in place, of course.

By the time we had our online Christmas party, we felt that things were already starting to look up. We were slowly inching closer to the manic volunteer energy we had pre-pandemic.

The seventh batch of volunteers, Batch Gihay (Cebuano for “petal”), were finally able to have their orientation at the beginning of 2021, albeit via Zoom. For their in-person counselor’s training, only three at a time had to book their schedule on weekends. Circumstances made things limited, but not impossible. We made them possible.

“It’s that insatiable hunger to keep on reaching out to people who need our services that kept us going,” shares Jan Shaltiel Vincent Estrada, head of LoveYourself Cebu.

I didn’t anticipate that much difficulty in our 2nd year, but this pandemic struck and we had to fight. We had volunteers who lost loved ones, and we had some that caught COVID themselves, but we made it a point to be there for each other, in order to be there for our clients. In the end, we came out victorious.

Volunteers in Cebu strike a pose at the facade of the LoveYourself White House community center (Photo from LoveYourself White House).