Gokongwei-funded school to represent RP in international skills tilt

A special school funded by the Gokongwei group of companies has been chosen as the country’s representative to the technical world’s version of the Olympics.

A team from Gokongwei Brothers Foundation Technical Training Center is set to leave for Seoul, South Korea next month to compete in the 36th World Youth Skills Olympics. The World Youth Skills Olympics is a biennial event that brings together the world’s best technical workers from rudimentary fields as carpentry and cosmetics to high technology trade areas as "optoelectronics" and "autotronics".

The GBF Technical Training Center’s team of engineer Dominique Labiano and graduating scholars Serafin Orozco and Dominador Ilagan will compete in a specialized field known as "mechatronics" a hybrid technology merging mechanics, electrical, electronics and informatics.

One example of a system that uses mechatronics and other hybrid technologies are motion sensors that control the lighting systems of hotels. These sensors automatically turn on the lights of a hallway or a room whenever they sense movement.

The four-day competition in Seoul will involve assembling and trouble-shooting such systems.

"We are competing with the best of the best," GBF Technical Training Center director Philip Torres said.

The GBF Technical Training Center was put up in 1997 on a three-hectare lot at the Litton Mills compound in Pasig.

In 1999, the technical center began training 57 scholars selected from the Gokongwei group’s own corps of engineers and skilled workers and graduates of some of the country’s leading technical and engineering schools.

The GBF Technical Training Center is the Gokongwei group’s response to the country’s need for more technicians. To make sure the center’s graduates are to par, the group invested a total of P160 million with P40 million used to buy the best and latest equipment available.

This will only be the second time that the Philippines will join the World Youth Skills Olympics. The country first joined the competition in 1999 in Montreal, Canada.

"We sent a team to get a benchmark in 1999, to wet our beak, so to speak" Torres said.

He said the Philippines would be up against tough competition from Austria, Germany, Singapore and South Korea.

Apart from the GBF Technical Training Center, AMA Computer College and the Technical Education Skills Development Authority will also send teams to the World Youth Skills Olympics to compete in the areas of computer science and automotive technology.

"We are happy that we are breaking out of our low-profile shell, and it shows we are really trying to excel in areas that can be considered cutting edge, not in purely traditional areas," Torres said.

This time, we are projecting an image that we can also compete in high-technology, high-profile trade areas," he said.