USAID, PBSP partner for Brigada Eskwela

MANILA, Philippines – The US Agency for International Development (USAID) assisted the Brigada Eskwela ’09 in the repair of more than 100 public schools in Mindanao.

USAID, through its Education, Quality and Access to Learning and Livelihood Skills (EQuALLS2) program, partnered with the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) in supporting the yearly activity of the Department of Education.

PBSP rallied its corporate members to join the Brigada Eskwela nationwide through employee volunteering, donations of products, books, supplies and construction materials, among others.

Schools the USAID and PBSP are helping have received donations from Pacific Paint (Boysen) Phils, Inc., AMSPEC, The Bookmark, Inc., Ho Tong Hardware, Inc., Lucerne Jewelers, Bato Balani Foundation, Inc., Adarna House, Inc., and Sterling Paper Products, Isla Lipana & Co./PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Lamoiyan Corporation, and United Laboratories, Inc.

Mercury Drug Corp., Union Galvasteel Corp., Makati Medical Center, M&H Food Corp., and Manila Bankers Life Insurance Corp. have also pledged their assistance. Holcim Philippines sent volunteers to prepare the Sto. Niño Elementary School in Parañaque.

USAID and PBSP worked together with the schools’ Parents-Teachers Community Associations (PTCA), which PBSP has given capacity-building trainings in previous years.

“Perhaps more than the donations, the greater value added is PBSP’s local community mobilization and capacity building of organized groups like PTCAs,” said PBSP executive director Gil Salazar.

“In the end, when PBSP and USAID are no longer there, the communities can take positive action on their own,” Salazar added.

Salazar said that one of PBSP’s targets this year is to have 8,000 new scholars and education beneficiaries in the poorest areas already assisted and capacitated by PBSP.

“This year, we hope to get support from businesses and donors so that we can add more classrooms and provide basic needs like desks so that children do not have to squat on the floor,” he added.

Committed to poverty reduction, PBSP member-companies and partners invested P93.02 million in 2008 to enable poor children to have access to education, improve their academic performance, and to enhance learning through IT in education.