By Malio Aguilar

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One has a degree in accounting and the other in education, and both were looking for work until the pandemic hit. Now, Aleah Gampong and Emy Tarnate are among hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers helping children survive an education system altered by a global health crisis.

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Twenty-three-year old Gampong is part of a volunteer group in Balindong town in Lanao del Sur in Mindanao island in the south. A veteran of community service at a young age, she spends three days a week braving rains and rough terrains to mentor kids in remote areas.

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Tarnate, who’s a year younger and plans to be a mathematics teacher, tutors kids daily in reading and math for free in her hometown in San Gabriel in northern La Union province.

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Volunteers like them have become essential in many communities across the Philippines where children are struggling to understand learning modules on their own with their parents either working or unschooled themselves.

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They help fill a crucial gap in the education system created by a pandemic that has shuttered schools and shifted learning to homes and the burden of mentoring children to parents.

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In places where there are not enough teachers, where smartphones, computers and Internet connectivity in homes are rare, in-person tutorials from these volunteers have become nearly indispensable for learners.

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And to some extent, communities that are rethinking methods to limit any disruption in children’s education in the midst of the pandemic has also spurred volunteerism in many parts of the country, fostering a genuine desire to help students cope with the demands of remote learning.

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Training ground

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The volunteers are typically degree holders and undergraduates willing to teach children, either recruited by the barangays like in the case of San Gabriel or by educators leading fresh learning approaches as in the case of Balindong.

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Tarnate was part of a reading caravan during the summer who hiked mountains to reach the kids. When that ended, she continued tutoring elementary and high school students in a barangay hall near her place that’s now turned into an in-person tutorial hub, with safety measures in place.

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“I volunteered because I didn’t want these kids to waste their time learning nothing,” she says. Among other things, she helps them with proper pronunciation of English words, recalling a time in college when she got bullied for mispronouncing words, which she doesn’t want them to experience.

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“This is also a training ground for me and it will help me develop my teaching skills,” said Tarnate, who bikes with a fellow volunteer on Fridays to mentor kids in another village.

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Some families, thankful for their work, offer snacks and sometimes token fees, to the volunteers, she says, which are shared equally among them.

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In Balindong, Gampong is part of a group that launched tutoring sessions in mid-October called Siyap Ko Siringan – a Maranao term that means “caring for your neighbor.”

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Paypa Serad, a 36-year-old district school supervisor who started the program, says she got the idea from a seminar conducted by Synergeia Foundation in September where the organisation proposed small learning hubs run by volunteers. She then recruited her former high school students who are now college graduates, including Gampong, to join her.

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Synergeia is working to improve the quality of basic education for Filipino children, pushing for reforms in 426 local government partners to boost learning in communities. The foundation works with institutions like the United Nations Children’s Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

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‘Maximise learning potential’

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Gampong says the group has since focused on five villages where the children, they realised, need more help. But getting to these places is never easy.

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“Roads are rough and when it rains they become so muddy so traveling takes a while,” she says. “We also walk far to some of the places because the kids are divided by grade levels and are not in one location.”

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In her volunteer work, she saw how tough it’s been for some students to keep up with the learning modules on their own. In one session, she said one student pleaded with her for daily tutorials, and became glum when told that the group needed to visit other kids elsewhere.

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Doing community service is something that Gampong is used to, having joined various relief drives.

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She recently took part in efforts to provide financial aid to tricycle drivers who suffered income loss due to the pandemic and previously participated in a feeding program in a provincial jail in Marawi City, the site of a five-month battle between the military and Islamic militants in 2017 that left the city in ruins.

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Back in San Gabriel, another volunteer, engineering student Michaella Pasian spent many hours with fellow volunteers during the summer to make supplementary learning modules for kids during  the annual reading caravan.

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She continues to help some learners in math and art, tutoring them in her spare time.

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“It would be a shame if the students do not maximise their learning potential,” says Pasian. “I know how it feels to be left behind in school and I do not want any student to feel the same way.”

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By Manolo Serapio Jr.

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Between January and September, the number of people who took their own lives surpassed those who died due to COVID-19 in the central Philippine province of Iloilo.

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Most of the 72 suicide cases were aged between 17 and 30 years old, according to local police, saying the coronavirus pandemic may have aggravated the psychological and emotional stress some of the victims have faced. In 2019, suicide cases in the province reached 78.

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Now, Jason Gonzales, a member of the Iloilo provincial board, is leading an intervention plan aimed at training educators, guidance counsellors, health workers and volunteers “so they can identify problem cases and be able to intervene in cases of attempts.”

The health crisis that reshaped the world this year causing deaths, job losses and isolation has triggered mental health conditions and worsened existing ones.

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Children are among those who have become vulnerable as many grapple with the demands of remote learning, making it crucial for communities around them to provide the necessary support to spur both their educational and emotional growth.

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Iloilo’s response highlights how the pandemic has been pushing communities across the Philippines to take bolder steps in adapting to the new normal, from innovative learning approaches to critical support systems like the one the province is staging, which it hopes to roll out wider in the future.

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“We have to find ways to address this other pandemic,” Gonzales said during the Nov. 20 pilot run of the virtual training workshop.

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Isip Kalasag

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The initiative called Isip Kalasag, or Mind Shield, is aimed at combating the rising cases of suicides in Iloilo by “developing, training and capacitating mental health warriors.”

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The workshop was facilitated by the Panay Regional Education Council, Global Shapers Iloilo and Synergeia Foundation.

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As it works with communities in the country to lift the quality of basic education, Synergeia strives for a holistic approach to the development of every child including mental and emotional growth.

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Around 3.6 million Filipinos are suffering from mental disorders amid the pandemic, based on the initial results of a Department of Health survey released in mid-October. Officials say the number could be higher when the survey results and the range of mental conditions are published in full next year.

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Globally, more than 800,000 people die by suicide every year, or one person every 40 seconds, according to the International Association for Suicide Prevention.

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“For every one suicide, 25 people make a suicide attempt,” the association said in a presentation on Sept. 10, the annual World Suicide Prevention Day.

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Gonzales said the lack of official data in Iloilo on suicide attempts and those suffering from depression – seen as the most common psychiatric disorder in those who take their own lives – underscores the need for an immediate intervention program.

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PERMA model

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Friday’s trial run involved discussions on mental health awareness, employing psychological first aid and a social learning program for students already underway, with educators and guidance and peer counsellors in the Iloilo towns of Lambunao and Badiangan.

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All speakers were from Agubayani of Global Shapers Iloilo, a group of young professionals including doctors and psychiatrists, who launched in June a five-day social learning workshop aimed at helping students cope with the challenges posed by the pandemic including the demands of remote learning.

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Agubayani’s workshop is anchored on the PERMA model of well-being and happiness developed by American psychologist Martin Seligman. The acronym stands for positive emotions, engagement or being completely immersed in activities, relationships, meaning or what drives one towards fulfilment and achievement.

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Following the preliminary run, the plan is to finalise a content that can be shared digitally, assisted by live facilitators, to more areas in Iloilo and eventually, to other provinces in the Philippines, in cooperation with Synergeia, said Gonzales.

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“We will be spreading this once we come up with the video module,” Gonzales said.

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To help students grappling with the demands of remote education, Valenzuela City created a system to live-stream teaching videos by converting one of its schools into studios, hoping to fill a learning gap caused by the global pandemic.

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The city’s Valenzuela Live streaming school allows thousands of its elementary and high school students to have a better grasp of the learning modules supplied by the Department of Education, says Mayor Rex Gatchalian.

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“We found out that, left to their own devices, many parents are struggling with administering the modules at home. And many of them didn’t even complete their own education,” he said.

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As the coronavirus pandemic shifted learning from schools to homes, there emerged a need to assist learners, particularly those from fourth grade through senior high school, says Gatchalian, to better understand the learning materials.

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Done three times a week and broadcast on Facebook Live, a teacher discusses a subject like mathematics in front of a camera for half an hour followed by a 15-minute period where the teacher fields questions from students. The sessions, which kicked off when public schools opened on Oct. 5, are also uploaded on YouTube.

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The synchronous sessions start from 7 am and end before noon – covering at least four subjects. The local government uses 18 rooms of its Valenzuela City School of Mathematics and Science as studios that stream different lessons to the different grade levels. Each room has one teacher, a person that moderates the online session and a computer technician.

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The remaining two days of the week are devoted to asynchronous learning when students can follow through on lessons with the teachers via online platforms such as Facebook Messenger.

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Each student needs to create a portfolio where they need to store all their modular exercises which will be the basis for grading.

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“By no means is the system perfect. But it hinges on two things: Internet connectivity and accessibility to hand-held devices,” Gatchalian said.

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Valenzuela has 140,000 students enrolled in its elementary and high schools and is lending 24,000 computer tablets to the “poorest of the poor”.

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Internet connectivity costs will be shouldered by the students themselves, with money that their parents would have otherwise spent on their kids’ allowance or school uniform.

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Valenzuela is among 426 local governments working with Synergeia Foundation, a non-profit organisation aiming for every Filipino child to complete basic education. Created in 2002, Synergeia has partnerships with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

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manny.serapio@gmail.com

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