Education Philippines Project #33378

Send 200 Filipino kids to better daycare centers

by Haligi ng Bata, Inc.

Project Report | Dec 5, 2018
Crossing Mountains to Make Daycare Learning Better & Fun

By Monnette Zaragosa | Project Implementer

Tubaday daycare learners with hygiene kits & toys

On October 16, 2018, the HBI Team visited three (3) daycare centers to personally hand educational materials and supplies to the daycare learners and their teachers. These daycare centers are the Tubaday Daycare Center and Bay-O Daycare Center - both in Santol, La Union Province, and the San Antonino Daycare Center in Balaoan, La Union.

It was an adventure just getting there

While the San Antonino Daycare Center is easily accessible from the main provincial highway, it was a different story altogether for the Tubaday and Bay-O Daycare Centers. It was an adventure just to reach these daycare centers. Located in the heart of the Cordillera Mountain Range, the HBI Team - with the help of the Santol Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office - traversed the largely unpaved and narrow mountain roads leading to Tubaday and Bay-O by foot, car, and motorcycle. Our journey was made even trickier by the number of roads that were unpassable due to the effects of Typhoon Mangkhut.

Traversing one mountain road after another, we had to take especially good care of the important cargo that your donations made possible: the kids' hygiene kits, new toys, story books & coloring/activity books, and school supplies; and daycare equipment and materials such as bookshelves, LED televisions, and other needs like educational videos, puzzle mats, and kitchen utensils & equipment.

Seeing the smiles and enthusiasm of the daycare kids made the trip heartwarming

The first mountain daycare center we reached was the Bay-O Daycare Center. When we got there, the students were having their late breakfast. Though they were shy at first, the kids could not contain their curiousity about the things we brought with us. Before long, they have warmed up as they play with their new building block sets and flip through their new books. Parents were happy that their children are very excited to try their new toys and learn with audio-visual equipment. The daycare teacher, Mrs. Lita Bogtong, teared up a little as she shared a short message of thanks. This is the first time that private donors were able to help their humble daycare center.

The second mountain community, the Tubaday Daycare Center, was located inside a small public primary school. Students and the teacher welcomed the HBI Team, while the parents and community leaders profusely thanked the project's donors for making sure that the Tubaday kids will have access to engaging learning materials and toys.

The HBI Team came down from the hinterlands of Santol, La Union to reach the San Antonino Daycare Center in Balaoan, La Union. Kids here were already excited to greet us and were already using and playing with their new classroom materials even before a short getting-to-know-you program ended.

In total, approximately 150 indigent children between the ages of 3 to 5 years old were reached by the project as they are now going to better-equipped public daycare centers which now offers a variety of learning activities from story-telling, play and socialization time, and audio-video learning.

The mountain roads we drove and walked on may have made the trip quite memorable, but seeing the smiles and enthusiasm of the Bay-O, Tubaday, and San Antonino kids, daycare teachers, and parents as they receive and open their new books and daycare materials really warmed our hearts and brought a few tears to our eyes. The project may be small in the grand scheme of things, but seeing the project in action reinforces the feeling that what you helped fund is an important and valuable set of support that has the potential to change a child's life for the better.

There's More to Come - The Basig Daycare Center in Sudipen, La Union

Currently, education & learning materials are being delivered to Basig Daycare Center in Sudipen, La Union. On top of these, the daycare center - which was damaged by Typhoon Mangkhut - is also receiving infrastructure repair support from the Daycare Improvement Project. The delay in reaching the Basig Daycare Center was caused by logistical issues stemming from the effects of Typhoon Mangkhut and the untimely demise of the town's mayor. We expect to complete the project in Basig Daycare Center before 2018 ends.

Exceeding the Initial Fundraising Goal and Our Fervent Thanks

As of December 6, 2018, we have exceeded the initial US$ 5,000 fundraising goal and have raised a total of US$ 6,096. The excess amount will be used to provide additional materials for the four daycare centers, while at the same trying to reach and help learners in other public daycare centers in the Province of La Union. We will of course keep you updated with any further developments about the Daycare Improvement Project through the reports in GlobalGiving and through our social media channels. We also urge donors to contact us for any questions they may have about the project and beneficiaries.

We cannot thank you enough, our dear donors. You believed in the Daycare Improvement Project's potential and shared your resources with the children we aim to help. Like before, we will continue doing our very best work to make this project a success.

For now, in behalf of the daycare learners, teachers, and parents, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May your holiday season be filled with love, kindness, and gratitude.

Provided Daycare Materials & Equipment

Santol, La Union's Mountain Roads

Tubaday: Photos of Daycare Materials Distribution

Bay-O: Provided Daycare Materials and Equipment

San Antonino: Provided daycare needs

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Sep 10, 2018
Improving Daycare Centers is not a Small Project

By Leticia Magaan | Project Leader

A daycare learner; photo by Exposure PH for HBI

Every little bit helps.

In May 2018, we at Haligi ng Bata, Inc. (HBI) sat down to conceptualize our first crowdfunding initiative. As we explored potential development projects, we realized it should be something that embodies our organization’s core values.

At our very core, we believe that there are no “small” projects. Every development project – regardless of size, budget, and scope – has the potential to make a valuable difference in a poor child’s life.

Public Daycare Centers: Underfunded and "Just a Play School"

In the Philippines, local community governments (or barangays) fund public daycare centers. Richer communities are more likely to have good daycare facilities.

In the poor and far-flung communities of Sudipen, Santol, and Balaoan where at least 80% of the population live below the poverty line, public daycare centers are easy to overlook and thus, are underfunded. The La Union parents shared with us their personal stories of public community daycare centers that their children had to make do with.

Annabelle Flores, an HBI community leader with five children, shared that the public daycare center in their barangay "was so poorly ventilated, children usually escape from class to go home." Melvin Mingaracal, another HBI volunteer, recalled how her two sons went to a "daycare center that can be mistaken for a stockroom instead of a classroom."

Mary Jane Apulog, a farmer and a single mother to two children, confessed that the daycare center her kids went to was so poorly equipped that they "cannot read or write that well when they started elementary school."

It also doesn't help that public daycares are usually regarded as more of a play school, instead of institutions that provide early childhood education and development.

According to Mrs. Lita Bogtong, the daycare teacher at Bay-o Daycare Center, "Sometimes, parents ask me if they can also leave their babies and toddlers in the daycare center. They think we're baby-sitters or 'yayas'. I don't think they know or see the importance of daycare learning – but I can't blame them for thinking that way because we can't really offer a lot of stimulating activities for their children."

HBI has been active in the La Union province since 1996. In over 20 years, we and our donors have supported approximately 10,000 of La Union's most indigent children with their education and health needs. Along with this, we also implemented capacity building, livelihood, and skills programs to help the children’s families.

Our programs cover four key areas:

School support for students - providing students with all their needed school supplies & needs
Health – implementing supplemental feeding programs, providing hygiene training and supplies for the children and the schools’ clinics
School Improvement – providing new classrooms, books, and multimedia learning materials
Livelihood – establishing joint livelihood projects with the students' parents so that they can sustain the positive changes in their schools with minimal state and nonprofit support.

But to be really honest, due to the high number of poor students and public elementary schools in La Union and our other project areas, we are also guilty of not prioritizing daycare centers. After all, we are just a small nonprofit grappling with limited resources. We cannot help everybody even if we want to.

Then it hit us – what we are about – and we realized that daycares may be small and easy to disregard, but the service they provide makes a lasting impact in the lives of their students, in the sense that a child's daycare experiences can affect how he or she feels about future schooling and further education. Viewed from this perspective, making public daycare centers better cannot and should not be considered a small project.

Status of the Daycare Center Improvement Project in Sudipen, Balaoan, and Santol, La Union

Months after the June 2018 GlobalGiving Accelerator Program, HBI has now finished re-validating the identified needs of the Tubaday Daycare Center, the Bay-O Daycare Center, the Basig Daycare Center, and the San Antonino Daycare Center.

The most common needs are drawing books, story books, and educational toys. Children are also in need of hygiene kits which they use in their daycare good grooming classes and school supplies for daily classroom activities such as practicing how to write and draw. These daycare centers also need audio-visual equipment like televisions and educational videos.

Mrs. Dominga Rimando, the daycare teacher at Tubaday Daycare Center, shares that the biggest challenge that public daycare centers face is the lack of materials and equipment to capture the attention of daycare learners. "Kids have very short attention spans," Dominga says. "Since we do not have toys that they can play with or videos to show them, I feel like most of the kids are not really happy to be in our daycare center. I can see it in their eyes – they’re bored and can't wait to go home."

While HBI is currently busy purchasing all the identified needed daycare materials and equipment, our La Union Community Worker and Foreman are now coordinating with volunteer parents to build bookshelves and/or children's tables for the four daycare centers. We have attached a short timeline and implementation schedule of the Daycare Improvement Project that you helped fund so that you know where we currently stand. We expect to deliver all needed materials and equipment for the four daycare centers by the second week of October 2018.

A Thank You for Your Support and For Helping in Carrying the Load

The Daycare Improvement Project is a big responsibility and we thank you for choosing to support these remote daycare centers and their poor students. Through your help, four daycare centers are now on their way at having a fighting chance at imparting better daycare learning and experiences to 200 currently enrolled students and future children who would use their facilities.

We hope to reach more daycare centers in need and we welcome not only your continued support but also your suggestions and comments about what more can be done to improve public daycares in the Philippines.

For now though, there are books, toys, and art materials to be purchased, and there are bookshelves and tables to be made. We cannot wait to share with you on our next report the happy faces of the daycare students enjoying their new learning materials in their better daycare centers. Every little bit helps.

Daycare Students of the Bay-o Daycare Center

The Tubaday Daycare Center and its students

San Antonino Daycare Center in Balaoan, La Union

Basig (Sudipen) & Bay-O (Santol) Daycare Centers

Meeting with some of the Basig, Sudipen Parents

Attachments:

A Timeline of the Daycare Improvement Project (PDF)

7 Attachments

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