By: Jamaica Malabanan and Yuan Cuasay
As HLAF Interns, we were allowed to interview Sir Melvin Nunez, who is also a former intern and is now on their staff. He looked back and recalled to us his experience as an intern before becoming an HLAF staff.
“I had no idea what HLAF was.”
Sir Melvin stated that he knew nothing about HLAF and didn’t even know their address or Facebook page. He also mentioned to us that he went to HLAF because he couldn’t get into IRI, but the major reason he went was that many people had done internships at HLAF and he wanted to learn about their experiences. Furthermore, he said that the purpose of the internship at HLAF is to use devcom in such a way that he can act as a catalyst of change.
“I started my internship at HLAF, and I had no human rights advocacy; I had some, but not as extensive as when I was at HLAF”
He has no plans to apply for a job right away because his mind is still in turmoil, he wants to rest after graduation while also being able to find work right away, so he applied to HLAF. Sir Melvin’s first months at HLAF were difficult due to the transition of his lifestyle and skills from school to work. He even thinks, “Who am I to speak to those who are already there, those who are already good, those at the highest level who are policymakers?” But after a few months of engaging with the community and with the people they served, he learned something.
” I realized the purpose of coms and devcom in dev work, so I think the role is important in the creation and transformation of human rights narratives in the Philippines”
He recognized the connection between devcom and his job at HLAF and was able to utilize being pragmatic, purposive, and value-laden. Pragmatic means being truthful and serving the public realistically to solve society’s problems wisely. Furthermore, devcom is oriented to a beneficiary it does not provide general access to everybody but rather focuses on a specific area or branch, making it purposive. Also, value-laden in devcom always ensure that instills value, instills humanity, instills justice, instill more and mouthful activities that do in devcom, so realizing how important these three factors are when doing development works. For more reasons, Sir Melvin added that his job is extremely gratifying, such as creating advocacy campaigns, disseminating materials that would help increase awareness, raising donations, and offering doors for volunteers to volunteer. Every person has a set of rights known as human rights. No matter their caste, creed, gender, or economic status, every human being is born with these rights. To ensure that everyone is treated fairly, human rights are crucial because there are people who are not well educated on human rights, and they need to be rights seeking and rights claiming.
“Because most people are victims of circumstance, victims of poverty, victims of uneducated victims of family, or victims of their abilities, and it is necessary to address these opportunities for them to realize that they can do these beautiful things, and they can learn through in the promotion of human rights communication”
So, Development Communication is essentially about fostering positive social change through communication strategies. To make society a better place to live, more than only good communication skills are required. It is not sufficient to be able to give a nice speech, write a decent news item, or snap a good photograph. What matters is whether the things you do, the communication tactics, and the approaches you develop and use, can influence people’s behavior. Might they assist individuals to understand their potential so that they can help themselves rise out of their predicament?
