TPEF’s Social Development Initiatives

Travelling 321 kilometers south of Manila by land and sea transport, TPEF team was welcomed by hundreds of students, teachers and parent-volunteers for the group’s “Bayanihan at Bahaginan Para sa Kabataan” (Cooperation and Sharing for the Youth) last October 26.

The project under TPEF’s social development initiatives program, held at the San Roque National High School, was broader in scope in terms of assistance extended and number of recipients. Aside from the LCD overhead projector and laptop as instructional material and reference books TPEF donated, it distributed notebooks, pens, plastic bag envelopes and slippers to 744 students of the school and conducted two simultaneous Computer Literacy Trainings among 46 teachers from 5 public schools in the community.

The initiative was also made possible with the contributions by seafarers last 2014 Manila Officers’ Seminar, Ms. Berit Eskedal Haraldsen from Denmark and the skills and knowledge shared by volunteers from Torm Shipping Philippines personnel.

As Reynante Enriquez, TPEF’s contact and partner teacher in the said school, shared, “The school supplies and the slippers that you gave to our students, maybe for some of us, those are considerably little things, and will soon be consumed. But for them, what matters most is to know that someone from somewhere else dream for them and with them by showing concern which makes them more inspired to study and finish their studies amidst the trials of poverty they experience in life. You did it with your initiative here and we are very glad and grateful to have you as our active partner in supporting our children.

Lifelong learning is inevitable for us teachers; we love to learn more and more not only for the sake of learning but in the name of service to common good; when we work we learn, and we even wilfully create avenues for continual learning, and one of the best opportunities that we created is with TPEF’s Computer Literacy Training wherein we had our Eureka; how grateful we are of this blessing of learning, without discounting also the benefits that we will experience with the technological and academic aids to instruction that TPEF provided to us. Thank you so much TPEF!”

The San Roque NHS has the most number of students belonging to Mangyan indigenous people, or more than 60 percent of the student population. Bulalacao municipality also posted having the highest poverty incidence, or 4 out of 10 families are estimated to be poor, among the 26 towns of Oriental and Occidental Mindoro (Phil. Stats.Authority 2012 data released last Dec.2014).