By Jonathan Best
 

A foundation turns families into teachers, and communities into ‘schools.’
 
 
Former Finance Undersecretary and quality public education advocate Milwida ‘Nene’ Guevara is the 2nd Gawad Haydee Yorac Awardee.
 
The Manila Electric Co., in cooperation with the University of the Philippines, will confer this award to Guevara today, March 4, the birthday of the late model public servant, Haydee Yorac.
 
Yorac, who won major battles against warlordism and corruption in government, failed to win her struggle against cancer. She died September 13, 2005.  Antonio ‘Tony’ Meloto, the face of Gawad Kalinga’s (GK’s) community building effort, was the first recipient of the Gawad Haydee Yorac for Outstanding Public Service.  
 
Newsbreak magazine once featured Synergia Foundation’s work in promoting “education governance”.  We are republishing the article to explain Guevara and Synergia’s advocacies. – Editors
 
 
THEY WERE REAL SWEETHEARTS—generally very polite, well-mannered, and affectionate. They can certainly be noisy and, in the poorer districts, need food, a good scrubbing, and clean clothes. But overall, they reflect the best in the Filipino. They are warm, open, and full of enthusiasm for life.
 
They are the school children that Synergeia Foundation’s programs have reached in a number of provinces. They are the kind that the foundation hopes to empower socially and lift from poverty by improving the quality of their basic education.
 
The Synergeia Foundation is an organization that taps local governments, the school children’s parents, and private entities to “improve the access of Filipino students to quality basic education,” its Web site (www.synergeia.org.ph) says.
 
It started as a circle of Ford Foundation grantees in education. It has grown into a coalition of 35 groups, institutions, and individuals. Many of the individual members of Synergeia are project directors of programs that aim to improve equity in the access of students to basic education.
 
Synergeia’s programs focus on improving the English and mathematics competency of primary school pupils, revitalizing local school boards, and informing the public and private sectors about the ongoing crisis in Philippine education.
 
(When one starts looking into the problems of public elementary school education, one immediately starts uncovering the heartbreaking effects of poverty, corruption, and social venality on the most vulnerable members of society— the children. Most of the public school system is woefully under-funded, horribly overcrowded, and falling apart.)
 
Two of Synergeia’s programs assist university students, one supports a mobile library, and another trains teachers to utilize museums as education resources. Their basic premise is that to effect change, all concerned sectors of society—the parents, teachers, school boards, local government units, NGOs, and the business community—must start working together.
 
In Bulacan, Gov. Josefina de la Cruz was one of Synergeia’s first members. She has initiated a primary school reform program called Project Josie, which recruits parents to help with remedial reading, produces new workbooks for the pupils, and has made full use of the often neglected Special Education Fund taxes. Even in small, out-of-the-way rural school districts such as Marilao, or the impoverished coastal community of Binuangan, there are parents volunteering to mentor other parents and give remedial reading lessons to non-readers and slow learners. One of their mottos is, “No child will be left behind.”
 
In Negros Occidental, former Gov. Lito Coscolluela heads the Eskwelahan sang Katawhan (Eskan). They have successful projects in six municipalities, with 69 elementary schools serving over 6,000 Grade 1 pupils. Eskan’s approach is three-fold: identify and document the major problems disrupting effective teaching, change the community’s passive attitude toward education reform, and then find local solutions.
 
When Eskan gathered together the local stakeholders in education, the major problems were easily identified: over-crowding, poorly trained teachers, lack of schoolbooks, decaying infrastructure, a high dropout rate, child labor, and even malnutrition. All these contributed to low reading and math scores.
 
Eskan volunteers started organizing parents and teachers to give remedial lessons, tracking down children exploited for child labor, organizing feeding programs, and aggressively petitioning the Department of Education and local government units to approach education as an all inclusive community- wide challenge. Test scores in Eskan’s pilot schools have started to go up.
 
In Manila, one of Synergeia’s projects called Pathways to Higher Education assists high school and college students. It is committed to mentoring exceptionally gifted yet financial challenged high school students and helping them enter college. Pathways does not give out grants or scholarships but it does help link bright kids with schools or institutions that do.
 
Their approach is also holistic as are most of the Synergeia projects. They work directly with the student’s parents, teaching them livelihood projects. They give the students remedial lessons, help them with values formation and self-esteem, and guide them toward appropriate colleges and universities. They also work with the teachers, colleges and universities, encouraging them to reach out to more of the nation’s impoverished yet gifted youth.
 
Pathways was started by a group of idealistic Ateneo students as a summer project and continues under the aegis of Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, the president of the Ateneo de Manila University who is also a director of the Synergeia Foundation. The trustees of Synergeia include businessman Washington Sycip and former finance undersecretary Milwida Guevara.
 
The groups and individuals belonging to Synergeia have two things in common: a love for kids and a deep love and belief in the Philippines. How else could they have chosen to tackle many of the worst problems in the country on a daily basis, with very little pay or acknowledgement?
 
There are probably more people like those from Synergeia who think that it’s their moral responsibility to help poor Filipino children achieve a better education. They, too, will be surprised how much the kids give back in love and spiritual rejuvenation.
 
* Click here to link to to original article on Newsbreak Online.