UPOU BES student, Ms. Ivy Bella Funtalba, who was a participant and a grand prize winner of the International Conference on Girls' Health Student Writing Competition last year, is invited as a panelist for the 2017 International Conference on Girls' Health.

The event was held on November 14, 2017 at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea which was co-hosted by the United Nations ESCAP East and North-East Asia Office and the Institute for Development and Human Security (IDHS); it aims to instruct women's health issues, specifically students, through writing research papers.

Ms. Funtalba is a current BES student under Faculty of Education who took EDS 143 (Health Education) as part of the AES curriculum. She mentioned that being a BES student is a very challenging yet worthwhile experience. The courses which she had studied under BES, especially on the fundamentals of health education and promotion, has helped shape her winning piece.

Currently, Ms. Funtalba is a health education intern at Health Promotion Unit (HPU) of the Department of Health Regional Office (DOH-ROV) in Albay.

Despite attending the conference last 2016, Ms. Funtalba has yet to foresee additional knowledge in the event. She looks forward to learning more about current practices and trends in girls and women's health and to gain experience and insights that she can use to enrich her current internship program.

Being a UPOU student, she said that many opportunities for learning and for personal growth are emerging. "It's here that my plans for future work and advocacy have been affirmed and cemented."

Ms. Funtalba imparts encouraging words to her fellow students and to those who wish to study at UPOU to help them succeed in their future endeavors:

Follow your passion/interests and never stop learning. Grab every opportunity to learn something new or to improve. Also, don’t let challenges make you quit on your goals. Do it for yourself and, most importantly, do it for others.

(EDelRosario)