MANILA, Philippines - Acer Philippines Inc. gives back through its partnership with GreenEarth Heritage Foundation Inc. in order to improve the lives of farmers and their children by helping with their reforestation efforts, supporting their livelihood program in organic agriculture and bringing technology and education right in their community.
GreenEarth Heritage Foundation was established in May 2009 when it received a generous donation of over 100 hectares of land at the foothills of the Philippines’ longest mountain range, the Sierra Madre, in San Miguel, Bulacan.
The once neglected piece of land, where charcoal making derived from indiscriminate cutting of forest hardwoods was once a daily norm, now flourishes as a forest reserve and organic farm for the community’s livelihood.
In lieu of 4 I’s — Insurgency, Illegal deforestation, Illiteracy and Idleness — GreenEarth offers 4 L solutions — Love for the Environment, Livelihoods in Organic Agriculture, Literacy and responsible community Living and Lifestyles. Given its holistic thrust, Acer Philippines did not hesitate to assist GreenEarth in its mission and programs.
Acer supports advocacies that promote environmental conservation and providing education for children. At GreenEarth, the once-deforested hills are now coming back to life through continuous reforestation. Those who once engaged in reckless logging and charcoal making are now provided with training and programs in organic farming. The employees of Acer support the program by buying the organic produce weekly.
Support for farmers’ kids
Simultaneous to their environmental and agricultural initiatives, GreenEarth is looking after the welfare of the farmers’ children through its on-site educational programs like child sponsorship, early reading and literacy and feeding Programs.
One of the challenges that the community faces is lack of farm-to-market roads, rendering GreenEarth isolated from the nearest township. Many children of GreenEarth need to traverse unpaved roads and a river-without-a-bridge, in order to attend the nearest public school. Given the lack of necessary infrastructure, it is a continuing challenge to recruit teachers and volunteers to the area. Thus, technology is key to spur development.
Acer has been GreenEarth’s partner since day one of its on-site Learning Center’s launch two years ago. The Learning Center, whose motto is “Live, Hope and Dream,†opened with nine Acer desktops, a first for this underserved community where people live in abject poverty with no electricity, running water, toilets and most of life’s basic amenities.
And over the course of the year, Acer further increased its support. From nine desktops, GreenEarth now has 17 Acer desktop computers on-site, each loaded with Encarta Encyclopedia, dictionary, phonics and reading software, nursery rhymes, conversational English YouTube videos and thousands of tutorials from award-winning Khan Academy for grade school up to high school.
After a brief course on basic computer use, the children of GreenEarth are ushered into a place of independent learning, where education knows no bounds.
More gifts from Acer
Also, as a 2013 gift to the GreenEarth community, Acer is funding the construction of three rainwater harvesting tanks and a gutter system all around the entire roof of the Learning Center. This rainwater harvesting system will add 30,000 liters of water during the dry season which will give assurance of a continuous supply of water for the ever-expanding seedlings nursery and cultivation of vegetables for the feeding program.
As a result of Acer’s partnership, just one year after the launch of the Learning Center, GreenEarth was able to send one of its sponsored children to a scholarship competition for a five-year scholarship at the prestigious International School Manila (ISM).
This GreenEarth child won and is now the first farmer’s child who has been accepted to ISM in its 92-year history. Acer provided him with a top-of-the-line Acer Aspire S3 during his scholarship at ISM. Another GreenEarth child excelled in high school and was awarded by Acer a full college scholarship in Business Management at a premier Manila university.
In 2012, GreenEarth also partnered with Preppi School Foundation in Pasig City, a 12-year-old Department of Education-accredited school which espouses an international, Montessori-style curriculum with Christian values. The school is presently hosting six children of GreenEarth’s resident organic farmers and best community service volunteers. Acer provided desktops for these children so that Preppi and GreenEarth together can run an “educational research lab.â€
Acer supports the vision to run a fully integrated school at GreenEarth so that those who choose organic farming as a career can still dream of and achieve a bright future for their children right where they are.
Acer remains in the forefront of this campaign to seriously continue the lifelong reforestation in this high-risk area for landslides by donating GreenEarths’ first set of tunnel-type, bamboo greenhouses in the last quarter of 2011. Since Acer leads the pack in assuring GreenEarth’s sustainability through this very crucial infrastructure, two other organizations followed suit. One Acer bamboo greenhouse can house 9,600 seedlings at a time.
Aside from hundreds of fruit-bearing trees, indigenous forest hardwoods, over 27 varieties of bamboo and ornamental trees now in the thousands, GreenEarth chose to propagate moringa (malunggay) massively in its first few years of existence because of moringa’s ability to regenerate denuded, unusable land, its income potential for its beneficiary community, and its ability to effectively absorb carbon dioxide and combat global warming.