Pre-Christmas Learning Experience of ALS Female Learners in Leyte and Tacloban City Divisions in the Philippines
UNESCO Jakarta Office in collaboration with the Department of Education through the DepEd Regional Office 8 organized a one-day event gathering ALS girl- learners for a Pre-Christmas Learning Experience for Female ALS Learners from the Divisions of Leyte and Tacloban City in Region 8, Eastern Visayas in the Philippines. The event was held on 23 December 2019 under the Project “Better Life for Out-of-School Girls to Fight Poverty and Injustice in the Philippines” funded by KOICA.
A total of 143 ALS girl-learners, 61 learners from Leyte division and 83 learners from Tacloban City division respectively, attended the event to gauge awareness of the girl-learners who are recipients of the project by sharing their experience and motivating them to continue their learning through ALS. The programme included motivational talk from a mobile teacher on the need for financial literacy. The half-day morning session was dedicated to ALS learners of Palo, Division of Leyte, held at the Palo Central Elementary School in Palo and the half day afternoon session for Tacloban City Division, held at the Cirilo Uy Montejo Night High School in Dowtown, Tacloban City.
Mr. Alfredo P. Café, Education Program Supervisor for ALS, DepEd Regional Office 8 who represented the DepEd Regional Director coordinated the organization of the gathering of ALS learners. He conveyed his utmost and sincere appreciation to UNESCO Office, Jakarta for the opportunity of gathering ALS learners to have a special learning experience of sharing important inputs during the time of Christmas.
Mr. Remegio A. Alquitran, the National Project Officer for Education in Tacloban, on behalf of UNESCO Jakarta, conveyed sincere appreciation to all the ALS girl-learners for their participation. He encouraged them to continue their education through ALS in order to achieve their dreams and aspirations towards becoming productive members of their community and their respective families.
The Pre-Christmas event with ALS learners resulted to further awareness of the ALS girl-learners of having the notion that passing the Accreditation &Equivalency (A&E) Test as the ultimate goal of enrolling in ALS does not perfectly ensure to eradicate poverty. It is through the application of theories and practical skills learned from ALS learning sessions to be the most important instead of just passing the A&E test. This is emphasized as evidenced when the ALS learners sharing their testimonies during the learning session.
Further, the activity has opened new doors for the participants to explore the benefits provided by the Project. The mobile teacher-presenter shared that “making the learnings from the Project as part of everyday life, especially on entrepreneurship and livelihood skills can help alleviate poverty situation of the majority of the community people”.