Thanks to USAID, 4 Upi dropouts back in school

UPI, Maguindanao — Thanks to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), four intelligent Teduray dropouts — who have been dreaming of serving their impoverished communities when they become professionals — are back in school.

The four students, Bainot Mendoza, Caps Son, Johanny Mao and Gladys Galapin, are now being assisted in their studies by the USAID through the Notre Dame Foundation for Charitable Activities Inc.-Women in Enterprise Development (NDFCAI-WED).

The four scholars are the first in this hinterland town to avail themselves of the Department of Education’s US-funded Accreditation and Equivalency Program (A&EP), which is jointly implemented by the Creative Associates International Inc. and the NDFCAI-WED.

The NDFCAI-WED has been implementing various socio-economic and scholastic programs in troubled areas in the South since the late 1980s, focusing on needy Muslim and hinterland communities.

Mendoza, Son, Mao and Galapin, who were forced to stop studying at the Upi Agricultural School here due to poverty, have been reinstated after passing a battery of tests jointly administered by the DepEd and NDFCAI-WED.

The four students are children of marginalized families relying only on upland rice and corn farming for livelihood.

"Whenever there are calamities such as drought and armed conflicts, the productivity of farmers are affected and, as a result, the schooling of their children is also hampered," said Upi Mayor Ramon Piang, himself an ethnic Teduray who was raised by his parents with meager earnings from farming.

This town has been the focus of socio-economic assistance by foreign donors, which are convinced of the municipal government’s commitment to convert the area into a progressive community of responsible Muslim, Christian and Teduray settlers.

The USAID and the Canadian International Development Agency, through the Local Government Support Program in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, established here two years ago a municipal Internet facility and a community radio station as a conduit for the propagation of a "culture of peace" among local folk.