MANILA, Philippines - The youngest of five children born to a farming family in the municipality of Sultan Kudarat, Abdulkahar Canda Usop learned early on that getting ahead in life would depend on hard work and determination. He saw how his parents struggled to provide for the family on their small tract of land in a conflict-affected rural town.
But Kahar never let go of his dreams to become an artist or an engineer. He believed that all he needed was a chance to show what he was made of.
“In our community, I hear hindi and hindi mo kaya (no, and no you can’t) all the time. I tell myself I have to turn hindi ko kaya (I can’t) into kaya ko ito (yes, I can),” Kahar says. “Otherwise I would be disappointing not just myself but my family, too.”
His siblings, two of whom became contract workers in Saudi Arabia, had set an example for him by completing their education on scholarships. Eventually Kahar, who excelled in his studies, was accepted at the Amir Bara Lidasan NHS-ARMM Regional Science High School in Parang, Maguindanao.
Amir Bara Lidasan is one of only 17 public high schools in the country – and the only one in the ARMM – which follow the Department of Education’s regional science high school curriculum, emphasizing English, math and the sciences.
Even so, Amir Bara’s intellectually gifted students, Kahar among them, lacked the most basic information technology (IT) skills, as the school had no computers for their use. “Almost none of our 1,500 students had ever handled a PC before,” recalls principal Myrna Buhay-Lidasan.
In 2004, the school was provided with computers, software, training and internet access by the US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) Program, through its Computer Literacy and Internet Connection (CLIC) project.
More than 700 high schools and elementary schools in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao have to date participated in the project, benefiting more than 500,000 students and more than 16,000 teachers. Approximately 900 schools will receive CLIC assistance from the GEM Program over the next four years.
Like sponges in water, the students and teachers of Amir Bara began soaking up the vast resources of the Internet, working with different programs and downloading data and software to enhance their projects and classroom instruction. They also made friends online, learning about other places and ways of life.
“My dream of having a computer-literate school was answered, and we could connect to the world,” says Buhay-Lidasan, who encouraged her students to seek out scholarships and study programs.
Kahar applied to join the Youth Exchange and Study Program of AFS (formerly the American Field Service), which offers international exchange programs in more than 40 countries around the world.
In line with AFS’s three-step, merit-based evaluation process, he was asked to submit a research project with his application.
“The evaluation panel commended me on my Internet research and PowerPoint presentation,” he says. “The hands-on experience of CLIC helped open doors for me and my classmates.”
Kahar was granted a year-long stay as an AFS exchange student in the United States.
His destination was Vancouver (pop. 164,000), the county seat of Clark County in the state of Washington, where his host parents were Paul and Bernadette Gerhardt. It was a wholly different world from the one he knew in Maguindanao.
He quickly settled into student life at Skyview High School, where teachers remember his easy-going manner and eagerness to learn.
“He smiled all the time and cracked jokes with his classmates,” says graphic design teacher Valerie Darling in an email. “He loved using computers and would ask me a hundred questions. He wanted to squeeze all the information he could get in the one year he was at our school, and I found that very touching.”
“US schools are computer-based and everyone uses laptops in class, but even though I had fewer IT skills than my classmates, I could catch up because I already had some background,” says Kahar.
“Kahar was a hard-working, respectful, talented student,” recalls another teacher, Nancy Wistrand. “He worked well with his video production teammates and I truly enjoyed having him in class.”
His American host mother Bernie, an Ilocana by birth, was an enthusiastic community volunteer. She invited him to “give something back” to Vancouver by joining her in civic work during weekends.
Kahar delivered Christmas presents to children in out-of-home care and volunteered at overnight shelters for the homeless. He played baseball with substance abuse victims and chatted with veterans at a home for the aged.
“That looked better than our house back in Mindanao, and the abandoned children looked healthier than some of my younger cousins,” he recalls. “But I felt at home with them.”
At the 2006 Clark County Youth Achievement Celebration, which had as its theme “The Difference You Make is Infinite,” Kahar Usop received an award for his community service.
He and Bernie were invited to a reception where they met Washington State Governor Chris Gregoire, who spoke with Kahar about his year at Skyview and his life back home in Simuay.
Now a 20-year-old chemical engineering student on a full scholarship at Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology – and nurturing a new dream, to become a multimedia artist – Kahar believes that his year as an exchange student affected his life on many levels.
“It totally changed the way I see the world,” he says. “It made me independent and I feel that I can do anything now. We are blessed when helping hands enable us to succeed in turning a negative into a positive.”