Teaching could be so difficult most specially when you are teaching in a barrio. It takes a lot of courage and patience as you have walk at least 3 to 5 kilometers away from your own house. You would need to sacrifice your own comfort and convenient. You would have to sacrifice not seeing your family for 5 days. Above all, teaching in a barrio needs a lot of creativity as there are no or very few resources in the said school.
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| They Cry for Books |
Schools in a barrio gets the least priority in terms of infrastructure and development. They get the least number of books as well. No libraries and proper teaching or instructional materials. My mother was once a a teacher in a barrio and we rarely see her during the weekdays and then she has to leave in the afternoon of Sunday or very early morning of Monday.
My brother Jan Irvin Domoguen Kis-ing follows my mothers footstep. He is also a teacher at a barrio. He is now teaching at Colalo Elementary School. One night during our volunteer work at the said school he mentioned how his library project started and here's the story:
One day, he was energetically teaching about animals and how they are pronounced. My brother said, "this is giraffe and it should be pronounced as gee-raf." Suddenly, one of his student profusely disagreed to my brother and said that it should be pronounced as giraf-fe because the letter "F" is doubled and there is an "E" at the end so it should be the pronounced at giraf-fi his student explained.
My brother asked the student to go ahead and look for the word in the dictionary. He advised his student to look for the dictionary in the library. As the student went ahead and look for the dictionary, my brother continued discussing about the other animal... He grabbed a picture and showed it to his class. Everyone describe it as a cat. My brother said they were wrong because it is not a cat rather it is a PANTHER. Everyone disagreed and they insisted that it was a cat.
When my brother was about to ask his student to go to the library and search for the difference of a panther and a cat. The student came back and said, "Sir there is no dictionary in the library!" To his dismay he just describe the panther to his student and gave them the difference between a cat and a panther.
My brother told himself that the students needs a better library at least to have some basic reference materials that his student could read. That is where he also realized that no one passes their homework every time he gave them definition of words, or proper word pronunciation. He first thought of Books From a Garbage where he is asking his students to collect plastic bottles, bottles, sando bags, papers, etc and they are selling it for a penny to buy books. From that, they were able to buy some books containing animal pictures and information about the animals. My brother thought added a Garden for Books where he asked help from his student to plant and that is where they were able to come up with their first ever dictionary.
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| Garden for Pencil Project by Jan Irvin Kis-ing |
He is satisfied with the outcome though he knew that the progress is really slow. Plus the fact that there are some discouraging words on the side. I rarely see my siblings maybe once a year to be exact. So when we met sometime last year during his civil wedding. He jokingly asked me to donate a few books for the school library. We never discussed about it after that joke.
This is the birth of PROJECT MOUNTAIN ALPHABET.
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| The Old School Library |
When I reached Manila, I sent SMS to my brother asking him to send me a project proposal so at least there's some documents I could show to everyone and it would help in my book collection. However, the Mankayan District Superintendent never signed the project proposal up to this date giving all sort of alibi's.
Collecting of books, fund raising and spreading the word about the project and its purpose has finally reach its end to bring the books and whatever we have solicited to Colalo Elementary School.
Last March 9, 2013 the group composed of 8 people including myself delivered the books from Metro Manila to its destination. Upon reaching Colalo Elementary School we started separating all the goodies and putting them in a school bag (all donated by TROFI).
Sorting of Goodies....
The Gift we shared C/O TROFI
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| These goes to one student. |
We spent the whole day of DAY 2 in separating the books according to its subject and building bookshelves. At night we started fixing the books in the shelves and decorating the library.
Sorting of Books according to its kind and Re-Building the Library...
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| The students reads books as they sort it out... |
Cleaning the Shelves...
Arranging the Books in the Shelves....
Some of the books and magazines we bring at Colalo Elementary School Library
We spent the morning of Day 3 through gift giving.
There's nothing in this world who could match to feeling of fulfillment to see our beloved teachers smiles.
Here are the students who receives your gift...A picture taking with the volunteers
The children's laughter and smile and giggles is the trophy of every volunteer. It is so rewarding to see them really happy because of the gifts they receives from everyone who helped.
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| Our Trophy is to see them laugh! |
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| See these kids giggle! |
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| He smiles with joy! |
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| Volunteers prepares the bags on the stage! |
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| Isn't it fulfilling to see her smiles.... |
THE FINAL OUT PUT OF PROJECT MOUNTAIN ALPHABET ADOPT A LIBRARY!
The Panoramic View
The Book Shelves
The Teacher who started it all!
