Japanese volunteers build school building

MANILA, Philippines - Volunteers from a private Catholic university in Nagoya, Japan had donated their time and money to help build a two-classroom school building for the Roma Elementary School in Amadeo, Cavite.

The 29 volunteers, composed of 25 young university students and four professors and university officials of Nanzan University, had joined the classroom building program for this year of the Rural Asia Solidarity Association (RASA) which organizes volunteers from Japan in undertaking projects benefitting the poor in rural areas of the Philippines since 1999.

RASA and its affiliate organization, the Mother Laura Gertrude Seland Foundation, had raised funds among the Nanzan University community, for the school building in previous months.

But aside from raising the funds for the school building construction, RASA and the Foundation also send volunteers, mostly Nanzan University students, to help in the actual construction.

The volunteers are also made to go on a home-stay program wherein they live for three weeks with a poor family in the community where they are helping build the school to provide them a chance to get to know the culture and family life of a poor Filipino family. 

Each volunteer give their host family $15 a day as an allowance.

Roma Elementary School is the 15th school-beneficiary of RASA and the Nanzan University volunteers since the volunteer program was started in the Philippines. — Rainier Allan Ronda