Greetings from the Philippines!
Daring to travel and escape the winter, we flew from the US to the Philippines on January 8th, complied with the Philippine government imposed 5-day quarantine in one of the government-approved hotels, then eagerly made our way to our farmhouse in Baruyan, Calapan Oriental Mindoro, where the Baruyan Elementary School (BES), UNLAD’s “adopted school” is also located.
If you recall, the last time we were here was in March 2020, having just launched our Athletics and Arts After-School programs at BES. The students were getting ready for an arts exhibit and basketball tournament when the pandemic hit, and the world shut down.
During the last two years, we have been able to sustain our work at BES through various pandemic-response initiatives. In the Philippine government- mandated “remote learning” environment, all the 400+students, K-6 graders have been learning through the “module system”. Since most of the families attending BES do not have internet capability, the families are required to pick up each student’s work for the week in printed form from the school and teachers. At the end of the week, the families deliver back the completed modules to the school and the teachers. During this time, UNLAD has supported BES and enabled access to education by funding supplementary school equipment and supplies (printers, ink, paper, writing instruments) for teachers and students, including UNLAD’s 12 scholars.
Being on-ground over the last 6 weeks made us realize that this approach results in little - if any- learning. It puts the responsibility of in-person teaching on parents, many of whom can’t. To witness and hear the challenging stories first-hand from the teachers, the parents and the students was sobering to say the least.
Launch of the “Bayanihan Pabasa Program” (Collaborative Reading Program).
Based on these conversations, we learned that the development of reading skills has become problematic, and intervention in the form of tutoring has become a top and urgent priority. First graders, who have not had the benefit of attending in-classroom reading lessons have not learned to read. The reading abilities of many second to sixth graders have either stagnated or been diminished; some have become non-readers. The BES teachers identified at least sixty (60) second to sixth graders and all forty (40) first graders in need of tutoring in reading.
Adversity brings out the best or the worst. In this case, we found the best in the community. In collaboration with the local 4H Club youth members, BES administration and teachers, the local government unit officials, and the families, UNLAD was able to launch the “Bayanihan Pabasa Program” (Collaborative Reading Program).
The initiative focuses on helping about a hundred (100) BES students to become more reading-literate, ensuring marginalized and “last-mile” learners access to after-school structured literacy programs, over twenty (20) weekly reading tutoring sessions till the end of the school year. Our goal and hope are that these students enter the new schoolyear in September better prepared, with demonstrated stronger reading skills.
Scholarships
We are pleased to introduce you to our three new collegiate scholars in the Philippines, left to right below:
Princess Nepomuceno, Grace Rayos and Zhaimer Buenaventura.
Princess Ortega Nepomuceno is a first year B.S. Civil Engineering student at the Divine Word College of Calapan. She was accepted as a full city scholar, having qualified through a rigorous application process, including being a straight A student. The second child of six, her father is a farmer and her mother worked as an employee in a local café, until the pandemic hit, and she lost her job. Princess is a born champion: she belongs to a dance team who competed nationally and place seventh; she is a martial arts enthusiast, specializing in “arnis” and has also placed third in a regional competition. Her favorite subject is math, and, no surprise, enjoys chess. Princess aspires to become a civil engineer in large part because she dreams of building a house for her parents and family. She also hopes someday she can afford to send her mother on a trip to visit her native town.
Asked what challenges she’s facing in today’s learning environment, Princess cited: “On-line learning is so difficult, because of the lack of internet access.” She spends most of her spare time not only helping with household chores but also helping her younger siblings with their own on-line learning work.
While a full scholarship enables Princess to enroll and attend classes, she and her family need to bear the costs of books, supplies, equipment, internet connectivity and transportation. Princess will start receiving a monthly stipend from UNLAD to partly cover these costs; she also received a recycled PC, a must-have for any college student. Still, she worries about being able to sustain covering all the other on-going costs, transportation being a big one when in-classroom classes resume
Angelica Harani Rayos is a senior at the Oriental Mindoro National High-School. The older of two children, Angelica’s father is a farmer, and her mother runs a variety of small businesses: a “sari-sari” store, a piggery, even selling ice to fishermen. A consistent honor student, Angelica has applied for a full scholarship at the Nursing school in the Batangas State University. She has her own share of championship merits: she had won in chess and badminton competitions. An artist at heart, she’s found a way to make extra money using the “IBIS” art app. She enjoys reading prose and poetry, citing Atticus, the anonymous Canadian poet, as her favorite author.
Her interest to pursue nursing is driven by her desire to help her parents and her natural inclination to take care of people. She dreams of fixing their house, buying a car for her mother and paying for her trip to visit her family in another province.
Angelica said “on-line learning is so difficult, it’s like self-learning”; and is supplementing her learning with You-Tube; uses Google-form to complete her modules, as it has a self-help checking mechanism, unlike the paper documents provided by the school. She agrees that even with a full scholarship ride, and the monthly stipend that UNLAD will start providing her, the costs of supplies, equipment (particularly a laptop), internet access and transportation are financial burdens that her family will find difficult to meet and sustain.
Zhaimer Joy B. Buenaventura is a 17-year-old first year college straight-A and honor student, studying Architecture at the Batangas State University on a full scholarship. The daughter of a landscaper, she helps take care of their garden business and has started to help her parents cultivate some plants herself, using her earnings to buy her school materials. As a child, she was always interested in houses and models, drawing and painting them. This interest and her family’s landscaping business encouraged Zhaimer to study Architecture. Her paternal grandparents who founded the family’s landscaping business are Zhaimer’s source of inspiration, as they never waivered in showing Zhaimer their support, being with her every step of the way.
Zhaimer dreams to bring her family the good life they deserve, enabling her parents some leisure time, and help her two younger siblings to graduate. While Zhaimer honestly realizes how tough the road is ahead, she also understands that “I’m still nurturing my skills and capability and still learning along the way. I don’t have the perfect skills nor the ability to create flawless plates, but I’m working on it. It is not easy, but I believe all of this is possible.” She feels the UNLAD scholarship grant will not only support her financially but also empower her will to maintain her academic performance.
UNLAD continues to sustain the scholarships we began over the last two years.
Piedmont Virginia Community College, Charlottesville, VA USA (PVCC): Students attending the Workforce and Kids College programs, selected and administered by PVCC.
Baruyan Elementary School, Baruyan, Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines (BES): Increased to fifteen students (15), adding Kindergarteners and Special Education Needs students.
Opportunistic Scholarships in the US and the Philippines: Presently two high-schoolers: one US-based and one Philippine-based; and one fifth grader in the Philippines.
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. Over the last two years, UNLAD has provided support for STC’s highest priority needs, and we have been satisfied at the level of transparency and accountability by which they steward our support.
This year, we are participating in STC’s “Safe Schools for the Future” Program (SSFP) in what we hope will become a long-term sustainable program aimed at bridging the digital and social divide in the war-torn area of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
UNLAD’s support will be focused on the village (“barangay”) of Campong Inuduran in Marantao, Lanao del Sur. Over the coming year, UNLAD and other benefactors will provide this community with visioning and planning workshops, to be held with the children, youth, teachers and parents. We will provide digital equipment to help build capacity for the community to design, assess and conduct alternative learning platforms.
We will be returning to the US with mixed feelings: joy to be reunited with our family again; and some sense of void for the leaving work behind. But, as always, we hope that the work we’ve so far done will inspire new work, and create that proverbial ripple effect. As our new scholar Zhaimer said,” It is not easy, but I believe this is all possible”.
Small acts matter. With the support of our benefactors, we continue to believe that the small acts we are pursuing will add up and lead to more and more underserved youth having access to education and somehow make for a better future.
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