As the community nutritionist, Amelita works hard to reduce the number of malnourished children in Pangapasan Island. However, the community’s water and vegetable intake is highly dependent on the surrounding environment. While drought can easily deplete their rainwater supply (there is no freshwater supply on the island), tidal floods pose a grave threat to all non-salt resistant plants and vegetables. To reduce their vulnerability, Amelita hopes to improve rainwater harvesting on the island, and to elevate roads to prevent waves from reaching vegetable gardens.
Island residents depend heavily on seashells and fish for nourishment, though they tend to often sell the latter as they can fetch higher prices in the market. Immediately after the earthquake, almost all of the vegetable gardens in the islands were washed away. During a prolonged dry spell in 2016, the rainwater supplies of the communities were completely exhausted. To address these problems, the residents began to plant vegetables in elevated pots, while the governments in each community procured several rainwater collectors.