Fish vendors at Larap public market … hoping to boost their daily income from
increased sales. Catch is just enough to make their ends meet, that’s why they
can’t meet other needs of the household such as healthcare and education of
their children. – MWBuzzpic by ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
By
ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
Editor, MWBuzz
THE
NEXT general alumni homecoming of graduates from the Jose Panganiban National
High School JPHS will be on 2017.
During
this five-year period, there would be lots of things to happen – both bad and
good – as far as the Mambulao community is concerned.
The
new leadership of the JPNHS Alumni Association that was elected at the recent
homecoming is now looking towards the next five years – what it can do to help the
Alma Mater, the community and its marginalized people.
A
flurry of emails has been circulating among alumni who are hoped to deliver the
goods to the beneficiaries of its various social programs once the planned actions
have taken off.
But
right now, the leadership, which is being spearheaded by Jun Espana of the
Pag-Ibig head office in Manila
As
you well know, the alumni are spread across the globe and those who have the
capability to help push the organization to success are actually not based
right in Mambulao, owing to their occupations.
Those
who are nearby – say, those who live in Metro Manila – are the ones making up
the core of the group that would be planning the course of action to take to
reach this goal of bringing a change in the lives of our less-privileged
kababayan and at the same time helping the local government on the ground carry
out its mandated programs.
The
association has many capable members in the US Canada Europe ,
Asia and Middle East .
Of course, the association runs precisely because there are members who are
right here and have direct hand in carrying out its programs.
The
presence of well-off members overseas could help a lot, considering their
exposures to their own field of callings, which, in one or the other, could
help formulate better plans – the doable plans. And financially, they could
also help.
These
are the alumni who are in their early 40s as well as those in their 60s – professionals
who are now desirous of seeing progress in their hometown -- progress or signs
of it -- that they missed when they were
young high school students at JPNHS and young workers back then.
By
now, they have been enlisted to help.
A woman residing at one of the squatter shanties along the beach of Parang
washes kitchen utensils from the breakfast table … she could do more for the family
with a little business venture financed by cheap capital. – MWBuzzpic by
ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
First
and foremost, the association is looking at providing a cheap source of small
capital to qualified Mambulaons who would like to engage in income-generating
activities, such as buying-and-selling, food processing, service enterprise,
and food/vegetable production, just to name a few.
While
the community of Jose Panganiban is bustling with commercial enterprises with
the influx of overseas dollars from Mambulao OFWs as well as from those who are
permanently residing overseas, we know that one sector is being left out, and
this is the group who are living the hand-to-mouth existence.
Many
of them may have finished high school at JPNHS but are just luckless to be able
to pursue further education which prevented them from finding jobs that would
generate a sustainable living.
And
there’s more.
The
community is plagued with the so called “out-of-school children”, a term coined
by the good town mayor Ricarte Padilla.
He
told me in one of our chats at his office that our community is crawling with
“out-of-school children” and not just “out-of-school youth”.
And
this makes him quite exasperated.
The
first groups, Padilla explained, are those who were never in the classrooms
from ages 2 to 14, simply because their families did not have the means to send
them to school.
And
because of this, when they finally joined the school system, everything would
just be a waste.
This
is because during the formative year of a child from age two to seven , he/she already lost the golden
opportunity as a child to transform himself mentally and to acquire traits and
characteristics that would help them became good persons and good citizens.
At 14, there’s no more chance for him/her to
acquire proper intellect that a classroom lessons could provide.
In
the end, they would become a burden to the community.
On
the other hand, the so-called “out of school youth” are those who had been in
school – during the entire elementary and primary years and those who were in
high school – but dropped out along the way due to poverty.
This
group still has a big chance of going back on the right track of their lives as
they could still be salvaged, rescued and reformed inside the classrooms.
And
maybe, when they finished the basic education, they can acquire work skills
that would land them a good-paying job.
The
municipal government of Jose Panganiban is now trying to address all this.
But
of course, Padilla is not only concentrating on cementing the roads across the
municipality.
It
is also trying to encourage potential investors to come to Mambulao and put
their money there so that such enterprises could generate jobs for the many
jobless locals
Padilla
told me our community has a wealth of labor, but it has become a waste because
these men and women don’t have the work skills, thus rendering them
unproductive.
He
is also addressing this.
Without
really being told, the JPNHS Alumni Association could realign its emerging
priorities and be in tune with Padilla’s program while they are still being
hatched to be in tune with the actual situation in the community: hand-to-mouth
existence by the many and unproductive labor mass.
To
me, the JPNHS can’t afford to operate on the other side of the common fence.
Email
the writer: aphernandez@thenational.com.pg
and alfredophernandez@y7mail.com
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