September ushered in a new school year, accompanied as always with the aspirations and dreams of our youth and their families.
We had all hoped that by now, the world would have completely recovered from COVID-19 and back to normalcy as we knew it: kids in their classrooms, resuming their activities, parents back to work and their daily lives. Sadly, the euphoria we felt in the early spring following our vaccinations turned to lethargy as the summer months brought us a new wave of infections from the Delta variant.
We find ourselves at the end of September with most of the kids in the US back in their classrooms, but some are still donning masks and contending with the daily fear of infection. In the Philippines, schools continue to be closed, with distance learning still the norm. At the Baruyan Elementary School (BES), the community that UNLAD serves, the 400 students, their teachers and families continue to struggle with the associated challenges of distance learning with little to no technology.
As the uncertainties of the virus and its variants whirl around us, we have not stopped working towards realizing our mission: to provide our underserved youth with access to education.
We are delighted to report three new initiatives!
UNLAD’s new Scholarships at the Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC):
In this ever-changing and tough economy, we believe acquiring or updating one’s skills it key to becoming gainfully employed.
In this spirit, we are launching scholarships for high-school students and young adults to enable them to gain access to skill development and certification through PVCC’s Workforce and the Kids College programs. The scholarships will serve immigrants, children of immigrants, or first-generation Americans.
UNLAD’s new advocate, 8th Grader Jessica Guo from the Archer School:
Jessica is an 8th grader attending The Archer School for Girls, a private school for girls located in Los Angeles, CA. Its mission is “to empower young women to discover their passions and realize their true potential in an environment that is both ambitious and joyful”.
This mission is apparently taking roots in Jessica, who has become increasingly interested in global warming, climate change and its devastating impact on the world, particularly South-East Asia and the Philippines, where typhoons and floods have ravaged poor farm communities. With encouragement and support from her father, Jessica reached out to Save the Children, Philippines, who in turn introduced Jessica to UNLAD. Our conversations led to her discovering a passion for joining UNLAD’s advocacy for serving the educational needs of the students attending the Baruyan Elementary School. Since then, Jessica has spreading been UNLAD’s mission, gaining support for the students of BES, including setting up her own website. Her motto: “One ice cream cone, another’s school supplies” is catching on, inspiring her family, friends, and fellow Archer students to band together to make a difference!
UNLAD’s participation in Save the Children, Philippines’ (SCP) “Safe Schools for the Future” program:
The program aims to support approximately 97,000 primary school learners aged 6-9 years affected by the conflict and currently living in transitory sites and evacuation sites in the war-torn Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)in the Philippines.
The enrolled children are required to learn through books and materials that are neither written in local languages nor linked with the Bangsamoro culture, making learning a major challenge to these children.
Deeply moved by our on-site visit in 2019, we will now participate in providing these children with access to inclusive and safe learning spaces.
In addition to these three new developments, we continue to sustain and grow the work we’ve begun.
Scholarships in the US and the Philippines:
The 6 students who received the UNLAD scholarships at BES last school year successfully completed and moved on to the next grade. We received exciting progress reports from the students’ home room teachers and heartwarming letters of appreciation from the students and their families, including recognition from the department of education.
The results are so encouraging that we are extending the scholarships to 12 students for the 2021-2022 school year: 2 students per grade, a boy and a girl respectively.
Essential Community Support
We distributed basic food supplies to help alleviate the hardships brought by tropical typhoons that hit the Baruyan farm community in the summer, compounded by the unrelenting danger of COVID-19 and the Delta variant.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions. We’re always eager to hear from you and are ever grateful for your interest and support.
Thank you, maraming salamat po!
Terry and Allen de Guzman