Gifts for education from The Bellevue Manila

Gifts for education from The Bellevue Manila

Blessed with wonderful beaches, historical structures, diving locations and palatable-looking hills, Bohol has easily become one of the country's tourist attractions. Its unique topography makes it suitable for agriculture, making the province the standing rice granary of the region.

However, Bohol's strong agricultural potential is posing both an opportunity and a threat.

Bohol may be on the way to complete rice sufficiency, but there are other remote barangays in Bohol that are severely affected, most particularly in the area of education.

From the latest statistics, it has been found out that most elementary and secondary schools in Bohol have very high drop-out rates. Since these barangays solely depend on farming for their livelihood, most of the children still have to help their parent farmers in the fields, causing them to miss out on some of their classes.

Because of this, The Bellevue Manila helped the most needy schools in Bohol improve their education standards.

As its support to Deped's Brigada Eskwela for the school year, the company, together with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and Bohol Integrated Development Foundation, Inc. (BIDEF), distributed school supplies to more than 300 pupils in the schools of Malitbog and Caluasan.

The supplies include paper pads, pencils and sharpeners to the sons and daughters of poor farmers in barangays Malitbog and Caluasan. Teachers also received small bags which they can use for their other essentials.

“The assistance to these pupils is a great help since most of them used their school supplies from the previous year so their parents can save money,” said Malitbog Elementary School Principal  Zozima Ampoloquio.

The chosen beneficiaries were children of the marginal farmers assisted by PBSP with incomes below poverty threshold. PBSP identified the two schools to have the highest percentage of drop-outs.

Aside from the school supplies, PBSP also built Learning Resource Centers (LRCs) through Motolite's Balik-Baterya Program.

With this additional assistance, children will find it easier to study now that they have more tools they can use.

PBSP is now currently implementing the Bohol Poverty Reduction Program in nine municipalities of Bohol, including the towns of Dagohoy, and San Miguel. PBSP targets to help 10,010 marginal farmers achieve better lives.

For the complete photos of this event, you may visit PBSP's PHOTO GALLERY.