The Influence of Education in Enhancing Community Wellbeing

Abstract

Education has always been instrumental for everyone to succeed in life and get something better. Challenges in a difficult situation can be lessened due to quality education one has. Being confident about one’s own life and be able to control its own path can be well identified with the gained knowledge throughout the education period. Community wellbeing which is equated to a healthy community is enhanced by how the community members give value to education in relation to being prepared for the natural impacts occurring in places prone to natural disasters. Although natural disasters are natural phenomenon that may reduce the level of community wellbeing to nothing but with right planning, capacity building, community organizing  can result to high level of preparedness. The present study aimed to 1) identify the value of education as a sub-indicators in the sociocultural capital dimension in relation to community preparation, and 2) determine the relationship of education to community wellbeing. Face to face interviews aided by a standardized questionnaire to 210 household heads  in Albay, Bohol and Leyte, Philippines as determined by GPower analysis were conducted. The study showed that the sociocultural capital dimension of which education as a sub-indicator belonged had contributed the highest to the strong level of CWBἱ (0.202). Even with the destruction of properties and lives but community members survived and most often than not, the kind of education one had enhanced their chances of being able to come back to their feet again. Most of the households had the minimum educational qualification to get a job and many had the ideal age structure with less dependents. It was assumed that the length of years in the formal or non-formal education increases the effect of education and thereby improve the level of community wellbeing.

 

Keywords: education, sociocultural capital, stakeholders