The little school with a big heart

MANILA, Philippines - The path is barely passable to vehicles but everyday, little boys and girls of pre-school age walk this way to get to school, the Silungan ng Katutubong Kaalaman at Tradisyon (Sikat) of Tenuos or a school for indigenous learning and tradition.

In a far-flung village on the outskirts of the mystic Lake Sebu in the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao is a small community school that struggles to survive. One windy day in July, fellow journalists and I trudged the long and muddy stretch of earth that led to the school. 

We were privileged to have the opportunity to visit the school as an outreach activity of the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines (EJAP). EJAP is the country’s premiere organization of active business reporters and editors. It has some 200 active members. For the first time, EJAP decided to travel to a remote school in the country to donate kits to the school’s 90 students.

The school is a tattered hut with small wooden tables and chairs. There is a two-room concrete shelter, which serves as both a library and the school coordinator’s office. The community school is second home to some 90 kids of the T’boli tribe, one of the largest indigenous people groups in the southern Philippines.

The school, founded in 2007 by a kind-hearted woman who fell in love with the community, serves the children of roughly 200 families in this remote village. “It’s my way of helping the T’boli people,” says Anita Castillon, a social worker with a passion for helping children and the T’boli community.

The team turns over school kits to the teachers of Sikat School.

The school seeks to preserve the culture of the tribe by inculcating in the children the importance of knowing their cultural identity and rich heritage. More importantly, it also prepares them for elementary education offered only in the city.

In this school, the teachers volunteer their services because Anita cannot always give them their salary, the school being outside the national government’s public school system.

“It’s a community school. We work together to make this happen,” says Anita. As such, parents who wish to send their children to school have to grow bananas which they sell in the market. The earnings from the sale of bananas are then used to send their children to the school. Ingenious and inspiring, I thought as I listened to Anita, a woman whose eyes glisten as she talks about the school.

The view of Lake Sebu is breathtaking from here. But more magical are the smiles, laughter, songs and dances of the T’boli children who greet us when we arrive. We turned over the school kits for the children, as part of EJAP’s outreach activity. The kits contained notebooks, pencil, crayons, scissors and a small box of vitamins. It’s very little help for a gargantuan problem but the children appreciated it very much. We also sent raincoats and slippers to the students and the teachers after our visit.

The school was also celebrating Nutrition Day at the time of the EJAP visit, with a wide array of colorful vegetable dishes.

It was a treat to see them sing and dance, all made up in their traditional colorful T’boli dress. Theirs is a story of courage, hope and inspiration – the courage to make things happen; the hope to make these dreams last and the inspiration to help others and to go on with the daily grind of living even with very scarce resources and very little help from the government.

And this is what the government does not know – that despite their inability to help remote communities such as the village of Tenuos, the men, women and children strive to maintain a school.

Their perseverance is unwavering, as reverberating as the songs of the T’boli children whose voices echoed in the depths of the mountain and in our hearts.

EJAP would like to thank the following organizations which made this endeavor possible: Pharex Corp., EchoStore and SagittariusMines.