The children crowd around to greet our arrival !
On Tuesday June 13th I, along with the manager of the Water District and a few of his staff, visited Pinagalaan to offer our help to the school and to distribute packs of school materials to the children. The packs were tailored to the age group involved – grade one got a writing pad, drawing pad, crayons, ruler, pencils, sharpener, eraser and pencil case, whereas Grades 5 and 6 got a formal essay jotter, two notepads, pens and pencils, a sharpener, ruler and an eraser. They were very gratefully received, and the children were very excited.
Grade 1 pupils display the school packs they were given
Before beginning distribution of the packs we had a meeting with the school principal and the teachers to explain what we were trying to do – basically to try to help the children (particularly poor, indigenous pupils) stay in school for longer by providing them with school materials, and helping to develop livelihood opportunities for the parents to enable them to keep their children in school for longer (and to be able to afford to feed them !).
The children happily begin using their new pencils and jotters.
We also want to help to make the children more aware of the need to care for the environment of the area so the supply of clean water to the communities is not harmed by environmentally damaging farming or logging activities. This is important since their future livelihoods will depend on conserving that environment – especially as most of them will grow up to be farmers. It is important that they learn how to use sustainable farming techniques, especially when farming steeply sloping hills. Apart from the need to conserve soil so as to maintain crop yields and stop the rivers and reservoirs becoming full of silt, there is a steep hill above the school which must be protected from the risk of landslips like the one that recently happened in the Southern Leyte area of the Philippines.
Providing the Principal with posters on environmental education - focusing on the management of mountain areas which supply water to towns downstream as well as to the local communities.
To help encourage the teachers to address these issues in the class we gave the principal two copies of a poster (one in English and one in Visayan) which explained about the importance of caring for the water catchment.
The Principal (right) and Grade 1 teacher (left) explain to me about the problems of running a school in a poor upland community.
With 53 children the Grade 1 class (6 year olds) is very crowded. Three children share each desk though they were designed for two, and there is just one teacher. By Grade 4 (9 years old) less than half will still be attending school. Instead, they will be working to help their parents support them. At present there are only 23 in Grade 4. The figures speak for themselves !
The Grade 2 Classroom at Pinagalaan is fairly basic timber building – at least it is well ventilated !
The school covers a large area where there is no public transport. Some of the children walk up to three hours each way in order to attend school. As school starts at 7.30 this means they leave home before 5am in order to get there in time ! School finishes at 4pm, so the children who live a long way away will not get home until 8 at night, and will then have to set out again before 5am the next morning. No wonder the teachers say they are tired in class !
The children from the indigenous communities are often absent from school on thursdays and fridays as their parents have run out of food for the week by then, and they therefore have to stay home or help their parents to earn money.
Today we discussed :
- educating the children, including increasing their level of environmental awareness,
- training them how to manage their environment more sensitively to preserve it for the future,
- making sure they leave school with an understanding of how to farm the land in a sustainable manner, and
- how we might provide training in new livelihood opportunities for the parents to help them to keep their children in education for longer and to raise household incomes and thus alleviate poverty.
A tall order, but we will do out best !
June 13, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Update on school is really good, I am getting a buzz just seeing the faces with those smiles, great to feel that we are a small part of this project. Hopefully we will receive enough uniforms from Mearns Primary and MEarns Parish Kirk to give to all the children
Mum