Masbate City: Leriza braves the darkness just before dawn to walk 2km downhill from her home in the uplands of Palanas in Masbate to school every day. Leriza is just six years old.
Boulders line the path and her teachers described the path as “dangerous” for children of her age. It’s a gruelling walk of about an hour but she does it every day without fail even when it rains and when the path gets muddy and slippery.
Leriza is accompanied by her nine-year-old brother who also attends the same school, Nabangig Central School in the town of Palanas in Masbate, an island province 552 kilometres south of Manila.
“We do not have money to pay for transportation. My father takes care of farm animals. We do not have much,” the first grader tells Gulf News with a faint smile.
“I don’t get scared anymore; I’ve gotten used to walking [in the dark].”
Leriza and her brother are not alone. Pupils walking all the way from school to their homes kilometres away is a common sight in the province. They can be as young as five to as old as 16 or 17.
To address the situation facing children like Leriza, philanthropic organisation Dubai Cares launched the Real Assets through Improved Skills and Education for Adolescent Girls, or Raise. The project helps marginalised children in two of the country’s poorest provinces, Masbate and Northern Samar, to attend and finish school.
The $2 million (Dh7.3 million) project was officially launched on October 11 in celebration of the third annual International Day of the Girl Child. Together with its implementing partner, Plan Philippines, Dubai Cares unveiled the programme in July last year to help provide cash allowances for the school needs and fees of nearly 11,000 pupils, 70 per cent of whom are girls.
Dubai Cares visited Masbate last week with a delegation from the media to monitor and evaluate the progress of the project and document the plight of the targeted beneficiaries.
In both target areas, many pupils from remote villages, especially those in the uplands or in the mountainside, are forced to walk 2km to 10km to school because their villages lack paved roads to the town areas. They have to cross rugged terrain, rice fields, or even rivers or small ponds. The dirt roads often have huge potholes that are impassable for light vehicles. Other students come from nearby islets.
Like Leriza, Jo-Ann, 17, has been walking to school for four years now. If she starts out at 5am, she’ll reach school at 6am.
“No vehicle can enter the area, only motorcycles. But I don’t take the motorcycle because it’s dangerous. The way down is full of trees. It has cliffs as well and is very very steep. It gets muddy when it rains. But even if it’s slippery, we still have to go to school,” said Jo-Ann, whose father is a fisherman.
Jo-Ann is among the more than half of the 1,300 students who walk from their village to the Rondena Atendino National High School. It is the biggest high school in Palanas, which serves eight remote villages. The school sits on top of a mountain and the children have one final climb to make before they get there. The land for the school was donated by two families so that the village could have a proper school.
At the foothills just below Jo-Anne’s school is a sign that reads ‘Make education your priority.’
But not all could — not because they don’t want to but because of the difficulties they face.
In Palanas, the Raise programme has identified 146 pupils in secondary school who are at-risk of dropping out. Some 70 per cent of them are girls, while the rest are boys. In elementary school, 81 students have been identified to be at risk of not continuing their education into high school.
In the nearby town of Milagros, the school dropout rate is more pronounced.
For the first four months of this school year alone, 40 pupils have already dropped out at Milagros National High School, Efepania Bantillo, the school principal said.
At another school, the Serafin C. Rosero Memorial High School, from three sections that start grade one, there’s just one section by the end of sixth grade because of the dropout rate, said Melody Vargas, a teacher.
For the school year 2011-2012, for example, only 44.44 per cent of the students who entered seventh grade completed 10th grade, Vargas said, citing school data. A year after Raise was implemented in the area, the rate has gone up to 85 per cent.
Poverty is also one of the reasons why students discontinue school, Raise coordinators said. In Masbate, 42.5 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, well below the national average of 21 per cent, a 2010 study by Plan Philippines shows.
The sleepy province’s main industries are fishing and farming, with rice, corn, and coconut as the main produce. Many pupils are expected to help their parents work in the fields or at sea to help augment the family’s income.
“They serve as breadwinners of the family. At the age of 12, they are already being used by the family. The girl is being sent as house helper sometimes here in the province or in Manila. Some are indulged in small-scale fishing,” Bantillo said.
“Their income would be 150 pesos [Dh12] after a whole night of fishing from 6pm to 4am.”
Aside from helping supplement the family’s income, many pupils who drop out – mainly girls – are socially expected to leave their education behind in favour of helping the family in managing the household.
The Raise programme addresses these concerns by customising financial and in-kind assistance to beneficiaries depending on their need. Raise provides school supplies and uniforms, school fees, transportation, food and boarding allowances to encourage the pupils to continue schooling.
The beneficiaries have been selected according to a wealth ranking system where the poorest members of the community are prioritised.
Mary Aganan, 53, a housewife and mother of four said she is fortunate that two of her children have been selected for the programme. She received 1,000 pesos in June for the cash allowance of her two children who are in seventh and tenth grade. She will receive the second instalment in January.
“Every day my husband earns 150 pesos out of which we use 115 pesos to buy two kilos of rice. So what’s left is 35 pesos for everything,” Aganan, whose husband is a labourer, said.
Aganan said she is grateful for the help Dubai Cares has extended. The same goes for the other parents and students who met with Dubai Cares officials during their visit in Masbate.
Thank-you banners were displayed in all the schools Dubai Cares visited. But the children’s beaming smiles and warm welcome sent out a stronger message.
Overall, Raise coordinators said it is still too early to assess the term completion rates of students since the school year has just started recently. But they said the number of students enrolling into the various education programmes through the help of the Raise project has improved compared to previous years, without citing exact figures.
Tariq Al Gurg, CEO of Dubai Cares, said the programme is meeting targets.
“It’s moving on well. The community, the mayor, the Department of Education, they are all part of the programme. They are very motivated and they want to make it happen. We’ve seen that it’s moving towards the right direction.”
Al Gurg explained that the Raise programme for girls’ education and gender equality is only the start. Once the model succeeds, he is confident that more funding from international donors will come.
“The most important thing is making the programme reach a sustainable level. Once the programme reaches a sustainable level, then you’ll prepare to scale it up district-wide and nationwide.”
But Al Gurg stressed that the programme is also a message to the Philippine government to put girls’ rights high up on the national agenda. And that can be done by increasing government funding for education.
A Dubai Cares team will visit the project areas to monitor and evaluate the progress of the project every 18 months.
“Of course there has to be a community-driven initiative for that support, whether it’s tangible such as infrastructure or soft such as community involvement such as this one,” Al Gurg said.
“At the end of the day, it goes back to the community, and to the country, and they’re the ones who’ll pick up the whole programme for good.”
