ALS in Tubungan

Monday morning, our PAL flight landed on time at the new Iloilo airport. Waiting for us at the entrance were Mayor Victor Tabaquirao of Tubungan, Iloilo and officials of the DepEd from Region 6 and the division of Iloilo.

Tubungan is one of the five finalists for the National Literacy Awards in category B of municipalities (4th, 5th, and 6th class). I am chair of the board of judges. The other two members of the group are Engineer Enrique Francisco and Ms. Jean Abad. Willy Catangui of the LCC secretariat is our shepherd.

Twice in the past, Tubungan won first place honors in the National Literacy Awards, so our group decided to visit it first and use it as the benchmark. Our DepEd hosts, who are in charge of ALS at the regional and division level, asked if this meant that Tubungan would likely win a third time and be elevated to the Hall of Fame. “Only if none of the other four finalists surpass it,” we said.

I was curious to know how a 4th class municipality, with its limited resources, has managed to promote literacy not just through the formal school system but through alternative learning systems. There should be some lessons that can be applied to the work I am doing for Synergeia in ARMM.

We stopped for a brief courtesy call with the Division Superintendent of Iloilo and were informed that it is the largest division in the whole country. On the way to Tubungan, I asked Mayor Vic about the recent typhoon Frank. He said that the damage to crops and infrastructure is considerable. In fact, we had to make a couple of detours because some roads and bridges were still under repair.

In Tubungan itself, 10 of the 48 barangays were inacessible for a week because parts of the mountain roads were washed away by floods or covered by landslides.

On our way to Barangay Igtuble up in the mountains, the police jeep ahead of our car got stuck in the mud. It’s a good thing that members of the 143 Rescue Team were right behind us to help them. In his past visit, Engineer Francisco had to walk through a narrow mountain trail to the farthest barangay Igpaho whose citizens belong to the Sulod Bukidnon tribe. This time, he requested our hosts to ask the learners from Igpaho to come to Igtuble. They walked the six kilometers, and were part of the people we interviewed.

We gathered in the community learning center, At the entrance, a small band of elderly musicians played on a banjo, violin, and drum. Two Sulod Bukidnon young men danced with bolos and daggers on either hand; we were told it is a welcome dance. Before the end of the two-hour meeting, two couples, including a barangay chairman did a traditional dance interspersed with an exchange of songs. The hand movements reminded me of some dances I saw in Cambodia.

An integral goal of the literacy program in Igpaho is the preservation and promotion of the culture and identity of the Sulod Bukidnon. An older woman-learner also showed us a curtain made of reeds and some cloth hats which she produces together with her children as part of the literacy for livelihood program.

On my way out of the CLC, two young women introduced themselves. Both are education graduates and LET passers, and now serve their Sulod Bukidnon tribe as teachers. I was told that during the last visit they cried as they told stories of how they were discriminated against while studying in Iloilo City.

I asked how many college graduates their tribe has. Five, they said. They sought advice on how a third education graduate could have a teaching job, since she has not passed the LET. “She can be an Instructional Manager,” I told them. “But talk to your tribal leaders if they can set up a regular ALS program that will employ her.” I added that the local DepEd or LGU may not have enough funds for an additional IM, but there may be donors who would want to support a small tribal community’s efforts.

As we talked, I thought of the Aytas in Zambales who are partners of ELF. They also have a few college graduates, but they cannot be employed in their communities and have to work elsewhere.

Back in the Tubungan poblacion, we met the Municipal Literacy Coordinating Council chaired by the mayor at the main community learning center which used to be the first floor of the old municipal hall. Connie Tababa who is the district ALS coordinator told us that since she shifted her office to the CLC instead of the school, she meets more out of school youth and also barangay officials.

Our food was cooked and served by ALS learners who wore T-shirts identifying them as members of an “ALS catering service.” The mayor has given the 23 members free use of an old building and taps their services for LGU-sponsored functions. I teased them that they may soon be having conflicts over the sharing of the increasing income from their catering business. They remind me of a project I visited in Phnom Penh – a restaurant very popular with the tourists not just because of the good food but because all the staff were former street children.

We also heard a couple of testimonies from passers of the A and E high school equivalency test, and from some of the graduates of skills training programs run in partnership with TESDA. More than a dozen have found jobs in Manila. A similar number are employed in Korea.

Just before we wound up for the night, I learned something that I think will be useful for ALS in ARMM. Our hosts showed me a small box with “baol” written on its front side. Inside it were a number of learning modules. “The real BAOL is in sitio NN,” I was told.

BAOL is acronym for “Barangay Aid On Literacy” and is a kind of traveling library. It stays in the house of a learner for three days, after which it is transferred to another learner’s house. Facilitators check how the modules and other learning materials have been read and used, and mentor the learners.

The name of the sitio – NN – has a story. The inhabitants are all poor families from Negros Occidental who looked for a better life in Tubungan. They were all illiterate, and since they all crossed over from Negros, the locals called their sitio NN, for Negros Navigation. Now that they are literate, they want others to stop using NN, since they don’t like the edge in the humor.

One more thing I picked up from Tubungan – a quotable quote painted on the wall of the CLC: “Education is not received. It is achieved.”

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