Brigada Eskwela in Action

CEBU, Philippines - Brigada Eskwela came to life much earlier than scheduled in a little farm school in a small sitio in Leyte.

This was due to recent persistent daily heavy rains for several weeks that eventually caused a number of land erosions.

An ocular inspection on classrooms and the school compound was made by the concerned head teacher of the Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School Francisco Dagoy, accompanied by his fellow teachers Constancia Loberas, Jocelyn Buscay, Laila Dayon and Dominador Alcantara, Jr. They discovered the immediate and urgent need to clear and clean, to refurbish and rehabilitate.

Save for two classrooms which were relatively new and required sparse repairs, the five other classrooms called for major reconstruction.

The strategically located deep canals were full of debris. Under the veil of washed away foliage, fallen fruit trees where found. The entire place was a gardener's nightmare.

Seeing all that catastrophy left everyone stunned. They were all dazed, jaws dropping and hearts sinking. It was the ideal time to whisper a prayer.

So the teachers met and organized a thorough door-to-door, call-to-action campaign, followed up by constant reminder through mobile phone texts and the ever-dependable word of mouth, targeting the communities of Buho and the neighboring sitios of Dapanas and Cabal-anan.

On the damped, muddy early morning of May 16, 2011, they came led by the same teachers – the farmhands and the cowboys, fishermen and farmers, vendors and peddlers, wives and mothers, even lolos and lolas and children – with their ever present bolos strapped to their sides and bringing hammers and shovels, rakes and pails, barras and picos, walis tingtings, abaca brooms and dustpans, empty cans and used sacks to transport soil, pebbles and sand and basically anything they could grab their hands on. All gladly responded and eagerly gathered infront of the Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School.

Named after the original haciendero from the small mining town of Entrago in Teverga, Spain, the four-building-seven-classroom farm school sits by a sloping hill with a panoramic view of the sea in the sitio of Buho, within the tourism-oriented municipality of Tabango, less than two hours land trip from Ormoc City.

Brigada Eskwela here we come, without a doubt, was their collective, no-nonsense, passionate, yet silent battlecry.

While professional help such as carpenters, masons and painters, were provided by some generous benefactors, the members of the brigade toiled for two weeks – save some afternoons when the heavens poured and kept everyone indoors, where they didn't waste any time, but continuously put the classrooms in order. They also religiously streamlined the trees, cleared the huge mess created by the heavy rains, built canals, created carved steps connecting one building to the next, planted flowering plants in several areas of the school compound, washed tables and chairs. The list goes on and on.

They did all that and more with an enviable spirit of camaraderie, with smiles often accompanied by banter and laughter, tied up together with that important feeling of belongingness and fulfillment.

Brigada Eskwela, also known as the National Schools Maintenance Week, launched in 2003 and made an institutional event in 2008, is an annual week-long project where teachers, parents, students, the business community and civic organizations participate in the clean up and repair of schools and the surroundings areas.

Brigada Eskwela was alive, proving once again that distance was not an obstruction, but rather an inspiration to an ever increasing, more enlightened population – now all true believers of the life changing effects brought by education. So, the little farm school by the hill, just a leisurely walk from an inviting beach in Buho, more than several hundreds of kilometers away from the capital city of Manila, was rehabilitated.

Last Monday, June 6, some 176 eager students including some tag-along siblings enrolled in the first ever kindergarten class, marched into the improved, upgraded, took-a-turn-for-the-better and headed-for-a-new-lease-of-life Don Bernardo Alvarez Elementary School.

Mabuhay, Brigada Eskwela 2011!