Philex calling on elementary, high school dropouts to avail of ALS

BENGUET, Philippines —Philex Mining Corp. is spearheading an on-air information drive to entice school dropouts in Baguio City and Benguet, to finish their elementary and high school studies through a government program being supported by the company’s Padcal mines.

 Feliciano Diso Jr., manager for Community Relations (ComRel) at Padcal, said the company will conduct its information and education campaign (IEC) between October and December through Z Radio (dwUB 98.7), a music and information FM radio station in Baguio City.

 â€œWe are bent on widening the scope of our educational projects under Philex Mining’s SDMP, or Social Development and Management Program,” he said, noting that the College Educational Assistance (CEA) Program was already created for college and university scholars.

 He stressed the IEC campaign will air from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. every Thursday, with the help of mobile teachers and coordinators of the Alternative Learning System (ALS), a ladderized, modular non-formal education program for dropouts of elementary and secondary schools.

 About 30 ALS teachers visited Bombo Radyo, dzWT, and Z Radio — all in Baguio City — on Friday in preparation for the IEC campaign. The plan is for them to visit as many radio stations as they can, to plug the ALS program, although the one-hour on-air show will only be on Z Radio.

 Remy Dum-ao, ALS coordinator for Tuba District, said her group, with the help of Philex Mining, aims to reach out to the 57 students in every 100 who fail to finish high school after entering Grade 1.

 â€œWe are grateful to Philex Mining for supporting this campaign for more elementary and high school dropouts to take advantage of ALS,” said Dum-ao, who is also the teacher-in-charge at Piminggan Elementary School, in Sitio Piminggan, of Tuba town’s Barangay Ansagan.

Janice Terso, a ComRel supervisor at Padcal, said Philex Mining has been supporting the ALS program since it started from 2007. She added the program has so far produced 116 graduates, 29 from elementary, from Padcal’s host and outlying communities in Itogon and Tuba.

 Last month, Padcal said it was considering granting graduate-level scholarships to qualified students living in host- and neighboring communities, as it granted 80 more CEA scholarships to deserving students in different colleges and universities in Baguio City and Benguet.

 Philex Mining has a total of 100 college scholars for the first semester of academic year 2013-14, including the 20 grantees announced on July 14. The latter are pursuing various college degrees and belong to the 42 families (in 33 households) in two barangays in Itogon.

In an earlier statement, Philex Mining said the SDMP accounts for 75 percent of the 2013 ASDMP, or Annual SDMP, amounting to P65.79 million, or P74.04 million including the P8.25 million carried over from 2012. The SDMP fund is divided into P34 million (including P5.3 million carried over from 2012) for livelihood projects, P17.07 million (plus P1.46 million from the previous year) for education, and P5.07 million for health care. 

It added that 15 percent of the ASDMP budget goes to IEC programs while 10 percent is for the DMTG, or Development of Mining Technology and Geosciences, which focuses on research to further develop the mining industry.