Sorry state of education in Lanao del Sur, Philippines

Thanks for hat tip to Rohaniza 'honey', AAI's Philippines branch Officer-In-Charge and Program Coordinator, for this video and information. It details the sorry state of education in Lanao del Sur, Philippines. This is why we need very specific, highly selective intervention and effective monitoring of such interventions to tackle these issues at the grassroot level.

Every year, the Department of Education holds the National Elementary Achievement Test for all schools and every year, schools in Mindanao end up in the bottom ten. This year, Ariman Guro Elementary School in Lanao del Sur got an average score of 21.7%, the lowest grade among all elementary schools in the Philippines.

I-Witness' Sandra Aguinaldo heads to Lanao del Sur to find out why.

She discovers Ariman Guro only has six teachers for all grade levels, teachers with no subject specializations. The school sorely lacks chairs and tables and the only textbooks sent to them by government is for the Makabayan subject, forcing the teachers to buy textbooks using money from their own pockets.

The students at Ariman Guro often miss class. Their primary reason: the prevalence of "rido" or clan wars in the area.

Many of the students here belong to warring families. 11-year old Fahad Cosain recently lost his uncle to Rido. For his own safety, he stays at home now instead of going to school. His young cousins now carry guns to protect themselves from attack.

The school's candidate for valedictorian, Rahimah Nasroden, was also affected by her family's clan war. Rahimah was not allowed to go to school during the height of the conflict, for fear of abduction and possibly even assassination. Rahimah is back to school now and determined to finish her education, believing this is her only way out of poverty.

This gripping documentary on the lives of the students and teachers of Ariman Guro airs this Monday late night on I-Witness. Entitled "Iskulelat?", the documentary was hosted and written by Sandra Aguinaldo, recently awarded as Investigative Journalist of the Year at the Rotary Journalism Awards.

Community Involvement: Key to Project Sustainability

(There have been a lot of talks about project sustainability in the development arena. This blog post highlights the key aspects of sustainability—community management and ownership of development projects. Read how AAI has been able to achieve sustainability of its projects in Mindanao, Philippines.)

Some of the regions in Mindanao like Jolo and Sulu regions have schools that have one of the lowest education attainments in the whole country. The whole region is not only deficient in schools but whatever schools they have right now lack necessary items like chairs, blackboards, desks, and books for library. Worse, the government has cutback education funding for the region. Unfortunately, this region is also one of the breeding grounds for terrorist recruitment.

The AAI started with intervention in the education system by providing scholarships to poor kids who otherwise would have either worked in the farms or get brainwashed by the rebels to join their organization. The AAI also constructed new schools and built libraries. Unlike the big donor funded education reform programs, the AAI approach was highly selective intervention—a need based intervention to avoid mismanagement of funds. This approach is efficient and result-oriented—which is reflected in high achievement of students in the schools AAI has intervened.

Sustainability of these kinds of intervention requires a multidimensional approach. Simply attracting kids to schools is not sufficient. The households needs to be provided with some sort of livelihood generation programs so that they have something to engage on every day rather than being sympathetic to the rebels and supporting their cause. So, the AAI launched a livelihood generation program aimed at generating a sustainable source of income for the households.

Our model worked because we did not impose our own projects in the community. We respected the local activities and designed interventions to make the locally produced goods marketable. We respected the local culture and social norms, encouraged people and informed the locals about the progress made during the intervention process.

We believe that peace can be achieved through economic development but this has to be done by respecting local customs and culture, by directly engaging local community and stakeholders, and by engaging on highly selective intervention aimed at producing the best outcomes with least funds, i.e. high efficiency and high productivity.

AAI combating global hunger

A commentary by Jeff Allen from One World was recently featured on Yahoo News. He talks about how individual NGOs, such as AAI are taking responsibility to aid the hungry populations in the parts of the world where we/they are already working. Our director, Al Santoli was also quoted in Allen's commentary.

In powerful overview of the situation, our friend Al Santoli at the Asia America Initiative summed it up this way:

"A new Cold War is taking shape, around energy and food. The world intelligentsia has been asleep at the wheel. While we rage over global warming, global hunger has swept under the radar."

But as Al Santoli pointed out to me the other day, even $1 billion -- divided by 100 million people -- is only $10 per person-in-need worldwide. And that's just the beginning of the crisis, and it assumes a fundraising goal that the WFP is unlikely to meet. Individual NGOs are taking responsibility for aiding the hungry populations in the parts of the world where they are already working. The Asia America Initiative, for example, has a long-established presence in the Sulu province of the Philippines, where they've been doing peace building and development work since 2002. Al told me that $10-50 can feed a family in the region for a short period of time. About $100 can buy the seeds and build the irrigation needed for them to be able to feed themselves long into the future. Right now, both initiatives are needed, and AAI is helping to make the links between Americans who want to help and those who need help far away.

For the complete article, see here.