Partners build more classrooms for Sarangani schools

ALABEL, Sarangani (April 5, 2011) – Two Sarangani schools received Monday (April 4) three classrooms worth P1.417 million from Southern Philippines Power Corporation (SPPC) in cooperation with Conrado and Ladislawa Alcantara Foundation, Inc. (CLAFI), Sarangani’s partners in education.

The classrooms, one in Nop Primary School in barangay Spring and two in Pag-asa Integrated School, are complete with comfort rooms, electrical fixtures and lights, ceiling fans, teachers’ tables and wooden chairs. Pag-asa is one of the newly opened integrated schools in the province’s remote villages.

“This means children no longer have to walk long distances nor look for boarding houses in the poblacion just to proceed to high school,” SPPC human resource manager and municipal councilor Joel Aton said.

SPPC Vice President Edgar Sevilles said they see it a company’s obligation to implement their education program in order to improve the communities particularly neighboring the plant site.

“We need to help the communities where our business grows. It is one way of saying how thankful we are for them,” Sevilles said. SPPC is a diesel-powered 55-megawatt power producing plant located in barangay Baluntay.

Pag-asa’s 95 percent population belongs to the Blaan indigenous group. Due to poverty, school principal Edgardo dela Cruz said pupils obviously lack school things and so become uninterested in their studies.

“But we are thankful to Governor Migs Dominguez for recommending the construction of the additional school buildings here from the SPPC,” Dela Cruz said.

Dela Cruz said the school lacks classrooms for the 1st and 2nd year students. “We just wanted our children to finish their education so that they can have a better future,” Dela Cruz said.

Nop Primary School in barangay Spring has 200 pupils but has only one classroom.

“SPPC is really doing something for education for the future of our people,” Board Member Virgilio Clark Tobias said.

SPECTRUM (Sarangani Province Empowerment and Community Transformation Forum) board of trustees chair Karl Vincent Queipo said the project is the product of a collaborative effort between the local government and private partners.

SPECTRUM program manager Janet Escobar said SPPC will build three more classrooms in Nop Primary School this year while the Department of Public Works and Highways is building another two-classroom building in Pag-asa Integrated School.

From 1999, SPPC has donated 24 classrooms, computers sets, books, built water systems, audio-visual facilities, provided teachers’ trainings, scholarships and financial support to students in Alabel schools. (Russtum G. Pelima/SARANGANI INFORMATION OFFICE)