Mission from Australia

Last Monday, I had two visitors comprising a mission commissioned by the Australian Government. They made a point to interview me first at my office at NEDA before they visit local government units.

The team was task with the preparation of a feasibility study about an Education and Training Project for in-school and out-of-school children/ youth.

Among others, the project will include the teacher training, school management training, enterprise education, and skills development.

They said the Australian government wants to start implementing this grant project by the end of this year.

While the project is targeting Northern Samar as its coverage, the team will also be looking to other provinces as potential sites. I encouraged them to do sop because the region has a high drop-out rate.

The data shows that 7 per 100 high school students drop-out each year and 2 per 100 pupils drop-out every year from elementary.

This concern from improving education is well placed.

Good education creates opportunities. It broadens choices open to individuals, regardless of economic standing. Remember the story of the “poor boy from Lubao, Pampanga”?

With elementary schools in most barangays and state colleges and universities in all provinces, the infrastructure and personnel are in place to make this possible. What we need, and this I emphasized, is funding that will enable us to use this resources.

The team noted the large number of drop-outs who, if coming from rural areas, could be deprived of the opportunity to improve their economic social lives. They will continue to be poor as they suffer from lack of skills that could make them productive.

I told the mission about the link between poverty and the drop-out rate. They responded by saying that the main reason they put in skills development is precisely to improve family income.

I hope the mission is able to craft a workable and relevant design for the project. I did my bit to contribute to the final outcome explaining how such a project can be implemented even if there are peace and order problems in some areas.

They were also concerned about the condition of the roads and whether foreigners are safe in Samar.

I told them the roads should not be a barrier to the project they are designing. On the matter of safety, I pointed out that while there are threats to the safety of foreigners, this is manageable as long as they work areas where the threat is very minimal.

Missions like this are helpful to the region. I’ve had the opportunity to meet missions from Germany, Korea, Japan, Canada, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. All of them eventually helped our region by implementing a development project. I wouldn’t mind if a hundred of these missions visit me each month. It will be my pleasure.