Shine learns cleanliness from ‘Mikmik’ story

Shine, 5, learns the importance of being clean to prevent COVID-19 from the story of Super Mikmik, a fictional child character in a World Vision storybook of the same title that teaches children the importance of being hygienic in times of pandemic.

Shine, 5, and her brother, Marc, 7, love to read the stories and information cards that World Vision provides to the family at the height of the pandemic lockdown.

“Super Mikmik says children should always wash their hands especially before and after eating,” Shine says on the lesson she learned from the story.

World Vision distributed copies of “Super Mikmik” storybook to its supported children at the height COVID-19 lockdowns in several villages in the country.

Shine also shares that aside from washing hands, she also wears facemasks whenever she goes out of her house. “But most of the time, I just stayed home,” she adds.

Shine and her brother, Marc, 7, are currently doing home study, answering workbooks that their parents get from their school every week. Students are not yet allowed to physically go to school due to the pandemic.

When not doing school assignments, Shine says she loves to play, something that she missed doing in school. “I play hide and seek with my cousins and Kuya Marc. We also play toy trucks. Sometimes we watch TV in our house or grandma’s,” Shine shares. She also helps her parents wash dishes.

Knowing how families struggled this pandemic, World Vision also provided the family with cash assistance and vegetable seeds so they would not buy vegetables sold from the local market. Prices of basic commodities rose steeply during the pandemic due to imposed restrictions on travel among communities.

“We are on our second cropping. We’ve harvested several vegetables already, like eggplants, tomatoes, beans and cabbage. The vegetables are for family consumption only but when we have lots of produce, we sell it to our neighbor and the market. We’ve earned around Php2,000 ($40) from the recent sell we had. We saved a portion of that money. The rest we bought other daily needs such as meat. My children eat a lot when our food has meat,” Catherine, 26, says.

Catherine has been a World Vision volunteer for a year now, something that her husband, Michael, 28, an accountant in a local cooperative, is supportive of. Catherine says that since volunteering for World Vision, she has learned a lot. “I’ve joined several World Vision trainings in the past. These training honed my skills and self-confidence. World Vision’s works inspires and instills in me how to nurture my children and other children in our community,” she says.

Like her mother, Shine is also fond of other children. “I want to become a teacher someday so I can also teach other children,” Shine says.

Story by Rosevilla Cabasag | Photo by Florefel Ochotorena