Through the Eyes of a Haraya Partner: Unang Tugon and Amang Rodriguez Hospital

To any crisis, Unang Tugon will be there to help you.
This timely cause is probably the closest to Jackie Cañizas’s heart, Haraya’s founder. This free life coaching campaign, as she described, was born out of the coaching community and took a life of its own. 

Here’s an interesting story of how this beautiful initiative was put together.
“This actually happened by accident”, Jackie said. Just days before her birthday and weeks after the pandemic stormed out, she felt that something had to be done. The stress, anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that this health catastrophe has brought to everyone especially to our frontliners and all workers, had her wondering.

“As coaches, what can we do? How do we marry what is needed to what we can provide?”, she asked her team. Initially, she thought that maybe it’s enough to reach out to a few people and offer pro bono coaching to them. But then God had greater plans for her cause.

They started reaching out to their life coaching community. It was a surprise that over 50 coaches volunteered to join her in just a short notice. That, to her, was already a win in itself.

 “That’s the coaching community that we want to have. Where it’s all about, “Let’s go, let’s help” and everybody would pitch in,” Jackie stated.

They helped unite the coaches and encouraged them to pitch in ideas. Hence, the birth of Unang Tugon. The ultimate objective of the cause is to bring light to workers in these dark times – a helpline for mental wellness made conveniently available whenever they are feeling distressed, burned out, or struggling with something.

In one of Jackie’s calls, an HR manager once told her that their old helpline is underutilized because their employees don’t want to seek psychological support. This has been an old undying mental health stigma that inhibits people to get help. This, in turn, makes life coaching a great option. 

Life coaches give employees a less daunting environment where they can just speak up freely without any fear. In fact, they received over a dozen calls from the employees a month after launching. Now, more and more private companies are signing up for the service.

“This has given us the opportunity to support companies to make sure their employees have proactive support. We are able to coach people before they get to the verge of getting desperate,” Jackie said. “I’d like to believe that’s how we help,” she added.

How did Unang Tugon help the Amang Rodriguez Hospital’s health workers?

Over the past few months, we have seen how our front liners and other health workers have struggled to save lives even if it means risking to lose theirs. The Amang Rodriguez Hospital isn’t an exception.

Jackie’s friend working in the hospital said that they are greatly challenged, tired, understaffed, sick, and mentally unstable. With these emotions in mind, the Haraya team then opened up an online Unang Tugon for the health workers of the hospital so if in case they need help, they can just easily access the mental wellness support that they need. 

Jackie has great hopes and plans for this cause. “If every coach knows that this is good, comes onboard and commits time, this will become a huge resource to be made available to more people,” Jackie said.

As what Pope Francis always says, among us, who are most capable must be in service of others. It doesn’t mean we have to wash away each other’s feet every day but we must help one another.

Jackie and her team are only few of the people who are actually willing to step out of their comfort zone and help as much as they can. You can be part of the team too. Shoot us a message if you’re interested to volunteer or if you’re in need of a life coach, we’d love to chat to find out just what you need!