The Eye and The Call

January 6, 2010

            

       Despite this “stormy” year, a hero was conceived from the spirit of volunteerism and has overwhelmed Filipinos and other nationalities alike. This heroism has invested additional huge value to the Philippine bank called Pinoy Pride.

 

             Cable News Network (CNN), the most prominent United States based television network providing 24-hour news coverage, awarded the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year to Efren Peñaflorida, who started a “pushcart classroom” in the Philippines to bring education to poor children as an alternative to gang membership.

 

             CNN Hero of the Year Award, already on its third year, is a tribute by the international news organization to selfless humanitarian acts of individuals from different countries.

 

 Ab Initio: From the Beginning

        Efren Peñaflorida, middle child in a family of three children, was born to a father who worked as a tricycle driver and to a mother who supported the family as a laundrywoman. Because of financial difficulties, he almost had to drop out of grade school.

 

             Through the support of Club 8586, a volunteer group based in Cavite City, and from World Vision, a group which matches sponsors to needy children, Peñaflorida was able to finish his elementary and high school education.

 

             When he was young, Peñaflorida was occasionally bullied and beaten by street gangs. This prompted him to decide to come to the aid of street children and rescue them from poverty and neglect through education. He also wanted to return the fruits of his life nourished by people outside his bloodline not to his relatives but also to other people.

 

 At 16, he founded the Dynamic Teen Company (DTC). DTC first used a bike with a sidecar for its street classes, but the tires would run flat and the chains fall off. With this reason, the group decided to use a pushcart instead. Pushcart classroom aims to teach basic reading, writing and hygiene to over 1,500 children in slums and on the street using the kariton (pushcart) where all teaching materials are placed.

 

 Peñaflorida’s group, DTC, was first recognized after winning the Bayaning Pilipino award for its heroic work in bringing education to poor children in Cavite. After DTC was featured in the media, the group started receiving private donations to support their operations. These have enabled the group to increase the number of its pushcart classrooms from two to four. But before, DTC members had to sell old bottles and newspapers to earn money and sustain their operations.

 

 

 After twelve years, DTC has grown. It was able to gain 10, 000 volunteer members who continue to uplift the lives of poor children by teaching them how to read and write in the streets.

 

 Peñaflorida is now a public school teacher in Cavite but still continues his pushcart classrooms on weekends. He could recall that DTC volunteers had to endure discrimination and even being branded as “trash collectors” with their pushcarts whenever they carry out their noble mission.

 

The public, the focus of his goal, took notice of his ingenious way of bringing free and quality education to the poor children by nominating him to the CNN’s list of heroes for this year. When CNN early this year announced its annual search for Heroes, Club 8586 nominated Peñaflorida.

 

Peñaflorida bested nine other contenders from different countries for the Hero of the Year award after getting the highest number of online votes, which reached 2.75 million in seven weeks. Choosing the recipient of the award was based from number of online votes in the CNN Heroes’ website. He is the first Filipino to become a nominee of the annual CNN Heroes’ awards and the first Filipino to win the top prize.

 

Peñaflorida received $100,000 and vowed that 90 percent of the cash grant would go to DTC and the remainder would go to the Church.

 

Peñaflorida has been a good example of a person who was not afraid to commit himself to the passion of altruism despite the internal contradiction that he could earn more money if he would engage himself to works that would satisfy his self-interest. He has justified that being an icon does not need someone to become wealthy, famous, nor politically powerful. He has ignited the truth that by simply helping others, someone could change the way the world moves.

Filipino Culture for Education

            Filipinos have the strong conviction for the importance of education in building one’s future. This belief is aligned with the human capital theory which states that economic development depends on the function of the educational condition of one nation.        However, circumstances conflict with this Filipino belief of giving importance to education in achieving economic development.

            A study by the Department of Education (DepEd) last 2009 shows that for every 10 children who start their primary education, only 6 go on to continue with their secondary education, and 4 will manage to enter college. 

In School Year 2005 to 2006, almost 65 percent of six-year old children did not begin their primary education on time. College drop-out rate is also rising due to higher cost of private tertiary education and limited slots in poorly-funded state schools. 

Under the Arroyo administration, the national average tuition rate increased by as much as 89.39 percent, from P230.79 in School Year 2001 to 2002 to P437.10 in 2008. Moreover, the Education Act of 1982 has given school owners a free hand in determining tuition rate, effectively limitless powers in this system. Furthermore, due to misallocation of budget, lower subsidy for public schools are given outsourcing the funds of the schools for the continuation of their operation hence, needing them to increase miscellaneous fees to cope up with the deficit. These school fee increases aggravated by price hikes in basic commodities, stagnant wage levels and mass lay-offs, have inflated the number of school dropouts and out of school youth this year.

With this poor Philippine educational situation, do Filipinos still have better economic development in the future?

Crime Exposed

            Penaflorida’s achievement of being the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year does not only entail how great Filipinos are. Looking on to the deeper view, this only points out the gravity of how miserable Philippine educational situation is. And this is what the government has failed to realize.

            Awarding of the Order of Lakandula, one of the highest honors given by the Republic of the Philippines conferred on those who dedicate themselves to the welfare of society, perform meritorious political and civic service, and lead lives worthy of emulation, is not enough to cover up government’s inability to provide one of the Filipino youth’s basic right, the right to education.

            Government officials should let themselves stand from their seats and see the scenario behind the walls of their comfort zones. If they really acknowledge Penaflorida’s heroism, they should let themselves be inspired by this simple man with extraordinary heart for the common people. It is not enough that they just link their names with this 2009 CNN Hero of the Year. Exploitation is still a crime.

            The irrational price of instant noodles at P220/kg which could be bought with just almost P20 in the market, continued inability to provide adequate classrooms, desks and chairs and even teaching materials, failure to distribute to students textbooks or instructional materials costing at least P186.96 million which are just stored in the schools’ stockrooms because of oversupply and deficiency in contents, and Philippines having the lowest budget allocations among the ASEAN countries despite of Philippine Constitution’s mandate to allocate the highest proportion of its budget to education, are just some of the myriad educational issues left unsolved. Many queries were left as mere mysteries. Many innocent lives were left lost.

New Year should go with a new heart for genuine public service. If the heroism has really transcended their “clever” minds and has truly penetrated their stone hearts, then should they start to clean up their mess that has affected and destroyed the pathway of million young lives. Should they really care, then should they act and not just talk.       

References:

http://www.congress.gov.ph/committees/commnews/commnews_det.php?newsid=805

http://www.thenewstoday.info/2010/01/05/issues.in.philippine.education.in.retrospect.html

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20091122-237752/Filipino-declared-Hero-of-the-Year-by-CNN