Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Education category.
Baseco’s NEW High School
As part of the overall developement plan for Baseco, we now have a High School, which is great and will save all our high school kids transport money.
The big challenge will be how many students per room. Currently in the Elemetary school there is an average of 80 students to one teacher. There are so many students that each child only attend school for 4 hours per day and school is held in 3 seperate sessions during the day. Half of the children have seats to use, half sit on the floor, the late comers crowd around the door…not an easy environment to learn in.
Mark
STUDENT SPONSORSHIP
Student Sponsorship Program…
We are nearly at the beginning of a new school year, and so we have spent most of the last two weeks getting organised for our sponsorship program. Collecting all new data and photos, checking students are enrolled and completed last year, seeing who dropped out, collecting new students – it’s a bit of an admin’ job.
Sponsorship for 1 year costs AUD $90 for Elementary School and AUD $250 for High School. The majority of our students are in Elementary School.
We prefer to start students in grade 1 or 2 and try to take them all the way through to High School. We have found that starting students for example in grade 4, will usually result in that child leaving school. If a child has not attended school in those early years, they have probably been working, and while they might be earning a very small amount, they are at least earning something. If we try to put that child in school, the parents will not encourage him to continue and the child will prefer to have money in his hand than to sit in a class room and perhaps be hungry…so we try to start them early, before they have worked. This scenario is especially true for young boys. We have numerous Muslim children that we sponsor in Baseco, 16 of them are in Mindanao itself.
This year we have 221 students enrolled n the program. We provide uniforms, new shoes, bags, all stationary needs and cover all additional tuition costs throughout the year. In some instances it also provides enough finances for transport (depending upon the individual students needs).
We try to keep the parents accountable for there spending and requests over the course of the year eg: a mother will receive pesos to purchase a uniform, she will need to produce either a reciept of purchase or the uniform itself before she will receive her finances for shoes and then stationary. If there is no reciept they must go back to the store and get a reciept before receiving further funds. Accountability is a big need nationwide.
For those who contribute to the sponsorship program we are incredibly grateful and you should be receiving your new student profiles in the next week or so.
The importance of Salvation Based Education, can not be overstated. Once you spend some time in a 3rd world nation, the importance of education, stands out as a major priority in turning nations around. It is so easy to take education for granted when we come from educated nations, but without education, most nations would slip into 3rd world poverty within a few generations. Here in this nation we need Godly, Spirit filled, educated young men and women who can think and problem solve, who can introduce new ideas and implement positive change. Children who will grow up and become national leaders.
THIS IS ONE OF THE AIMS OF STUDENT SPONSORSHIP.
Student Sponsorship Program…so cheap, so easy to do…
One of the major needs in any third world country is access to education. We don’t realise how many of the worlds children either cannot afford to attend school of any kind. Once a child, especially a boy, hits 10 years of age he will often be working to help the parents raise what might be another 10 siblings. Parents who have had very little education themselves, will not realise the importance of education for their own children. Lack of education is one of the reasons poverty exists and grwos in under developing countries. Education is a means of breaking the poverty cycle.
living and working in a large slum has shown us both the importance of education, but also how cheap it is to send a child to school for a year. We have the luxury of basically no admin’ costs, so the cost of sending a child to school for a year is ridiculously cheap.
In our world AUD $90 will put a child in elimentary school for the whole year. This includes two full uniforms, new shoes, bag, books, all stationary and all school fees for a whole year, and in most cases this will also leave money left over at the end of the year that just goes straight to the family of that student…$90, what a joke, less than $10 per month, who could not afford that. One less Big Mac meal a month, and you could put a child in school for the whole year. High school obviously has many more costs, so nearly AUD $300 is required at this level of education – but again breal it down, less than $1 per day.
We currently have nearly 200 students that we send to school, kids who’s parents just can’t afford it. We have church groups that sponsor children, individuals and we also sponsor many students ourselves…it’s such any easy way to change a life.
We sponsor children in Manila and in Mindanao, christians, catholics, muslims, non-believers – anyone at all, everyone should have access to education.
