When we founded UNLAD two years ago, we were not sure what to expect. What has since far exceeded our expectations is the warm reception and generous support of our loyal benefactors, and how we have been able to sustain and grow our work since then, despite the pandemic.
As we continue to battle COVID-19 and its variants, we feel confident that we can and will overcome the ever-evolving challenges of providing our underserved youth, in the US and the Philippines, with increased access to educational opportunities fundamental to their growth and development.
We find ourselves looking forward to 2022 with a stronger resolve to work more vigilantly to serve this mission.
In the US, most our students are back in their classrooms, but still observing all the COVID prevention protocols that have been put in place. In the Philippines, most schools continue to be closed, with distance learning still the norm. At the Baruyan Elementary School (BES), the community that UNLAD serves, the four hundred students, their teachers and families continue to struggle with the associated challenges of distance learning with little to no technology.
As we end 2021 and welcome 2022, we are pleased to share our update on our continuing work.
Scholarships
Piedmont Virginia Community College, Charlottesville, VA USA (PVCC): Through PVCC’s Workforce and Kids College programs, we launched scholarships for young adults residing in Virginia aimed at enabling them to explore and acquire skills necessary for gainful employment. We are pleased to share that we have awarded a scholarship to “T,” a high-school student from the William Monroe High School in Green County, VA. He hoped to pursue a welding career after high school, applied for the scholarship and is now presently enrolled in PVCC’s Youth Welding Academy.
Baruyan Elementary School, Baruyan, Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines (BES): We expanded UNLAD scholarships at BES from 6 to 12 students in 2021: 2 per grade, a boy and a girl, respectively. These scholarships provide the students with school supplies and other school needs that they cannot afford. We continue to receive promising progress reports from the students’ home room teachers and heartwarming letters of appreciation from the students and their families. The students are on track to complete their grades and move on to the next grade. Our eighth-grade advocate, Jessica Guo, who attends the Archer School in Los Angeles, CA is eagerly rallying her schoolmates to participate and support our effort here. She has been busy making candles for a February fund-raiser at Archer. Our hope is that we can expand this scholarship to more students in the coming years.
Opportunistic Scholarships in the US and the Philippines: We have awarded scholarships in the form of monthly stipends to three grade school and high-school students who need financial support for supplies, equipment and participation in extracurricular activities that they would otherwise not be able to. These students have proven to be hard working, resilient and committed to become responsible adults, and we feel privileged to be see them thrive
Partnership with Save the Children, Philippines (SCP)
Our strategy has always included partnerships with like-minded NGOs, as we realize that they have the infrastructure and scale to be most effective. SCP has been our partner of choice, and if you recall last year, we supported SCP’s Project ARAL project, aimed at providing critical learning support at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to a wide network of underserved public-school communities in the Philippines.
With the promise of our schools returning to normalcy, we are shifting our focus to STC’s programs in the war-torn area of Marantao, Lanao del Sur, part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). We were deeply moved during our on-site visit in 2019 where we witnessed remote elementary schools with only four classrooms, teachers, families and young students making do with whatever they must to sustain learning.
Save the Children’s “Safe Schools for the Future” Program (SSFP) is aimed at bridging the digital and social divide in conflict situations in the Philippines. It covers a suite of learning and development interventions for children aged 0 to 17 years old, implemented in partnership with the community, local government, school administrators and teachers. Incorporating innovative solutions, the results of which will be actively and systematically monitored, the program enables children living in conflict situations access to activities and learning materials that will allow them to achieve learning and development milestones.
UNLAD’s participation in 2022 will focus on building capacity for the community to design, assess and conduct alternative learning platforms, and will include provisioning necessary digital equipment.
Essential Community Support
Teachers’ school supplies: We provided essential school supplies to the teachers of BES as they creatively coped to sustain learning, manually printing teaching modules due to lack of technology.
Community life needs: The unrelenting interruption of the pandemic and the effects of climate change have denied the BES and the Baruyan farm community of basic human needs. Meeting these needs are primary to educational access.
With this in mind, we supported the broader Baruyan community by distributing essential food and hygiene items twice this year, to over fifty families.
Fueled by our motto, “small acts matter,” we look forward to pursue our mission more earnestly: to provide our underserved youth with access to educational opportunities.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions. We’re always eager to hear from you and are grateful for your interest and support.
Providing our underserved youth with access to education
Small Acts Matter
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