Philex, sister companies bring Christmas cheer to Benguet children

ITOGON, Benguet, Philippines — About 2,000 students from the host and outlying communities of Philex Mining Corp., in Itogon and Tuba, Benguet, had an early Christmas treat, as the firm and its sister companies recently conducted an educational outreach activity at the St. Louis High School-Philex in this town.

The mining firm, through its Philex Group Foundation, Inc. (PGFI), partnered with PLDT-Smart Foundation in the distribution of audio-visual materials, books and other school supplies to the students of Philex Mines Elementary School (PMES) and other schools in remote areas, including the sitios of Piminggan and Sioco-Cariño, both in Tuba’s Barangay Ansagan and in Barangay Ampucao, Itogon.

“These schools cannot cater to the growing interest of students to learn, for lack of educational materials,” Paul Buenconsejo, executive director of PGFI, said.

He added that Ampucao Elementary School, for instance, which has 386 students, has only 15 books for every 40 students who visit the library daily. In Sitio Piminggan where there is no electricity, the 112 students rely solely on reading materials as sources of additional knowledge. Sioco-Cariño, on the other hand, has 134 students with a mini-library containing 30 books.

The PLDT-Smart Foundation donated school bags and school supplies, while the United States-based Asia Foundation, through its program “Books for Asia,” sent over its first batch of books and reference materials to augment the learning materials for distribution during the outreach program.

PMES Principal Florence Sison, meanwhile, said the books and audio-visual materials, most of which are on science and math, will certainly help students improve their learning abilities.

“This is not even in our school or here in Benguet alone,” Sison said. “The need to improve on science and math reflected on the whole NAT results for the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR). Our goal is to meet the 75 percent required competency level, which is quite high, as the CAR average was only about 60 percent.”

Schools in far-flung communities including Sitios Piminggan and Sioco-Cariño only rely on books and other reference materials that the Department of Education (DepEd) distributes annually.

“This educational outreach activity by Philex Mining is a big help to our students who brave walking for hours just to get to school and learn,” shared Sioco-Carino head teacher and cluster head Mildred Marquez.

PLDT-Smart Foundation president Esther Santos said the activity is part of the “Paskong Kapatid” program under the MVP Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Council, which actively advocates education and social entrepreneurship.

MVP stands for Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman and CEO of Philex Mining, and chairman of the PLDT group and of Smart Communications.

“It is MVP’s thrust that people learn, in order for them to get out of poverty,” Santos stressed. “That’s the long-term solution and that’s what we intend to do at Philex Foundation.”