THE Panglima Sugala Sailing Boat School does not teach yachting or sailing.
It is a literacy program for the children of the Sama Dilaut tribe in Tawi-tawi. For nearly five years, the sailing boat school, called such because the school is easily reached by the small sailboats of indigenous Badjaos, who bring their children when class is in session. It is run by volunteer teachers, creates its own teaching materials and until recently had very little technology to depend on.
The project is spearheaded by the local government unit of Panglima Sugala and approved the Department of Education. It is run with the supervision of the DepEd’s district office. First undertaken in 2018, the innovative school expanded its coverage from Barangay Batu-Batu, and is now running almost sixteen kilometers across the Tawi-tawi Sea to the farthest barangay of Tongbangkaw where children of seaweed farmers are.
Last May 27, the PLDT-Smart foundation represented by its president Esther O. Santos and Daniel Guo, Vice President of Huawei Technologies Philippines turned over, via a virtual event, one School-in-a-Bag (SIAB) package to the Panglima Sugala Sailing School, represented by its head teacher Raymund Bunuan.
Dayang Sahali, a social entrepreneur was the conduit of the donation and one of the supporters of the school, funding it with profits from their social enterprise. With her sister Alyssa, Sahali popularized dried seaweed chips as a snack. The seaweed chips are produced in Tawi-Tawi using harvests of the seaweed farmers which is then processed into a delicious, crunchy snack, which in the midst of the pandemic, found a following in Manila.
“We are very happy and proud to be working with Huawei to provide the School-in-a-Bag for the Panglima Sugala Sailing School. These initiatives are what SMART and PLDT are all about, bringing education to the farthest corners of the country. We are happy to partner with Huawei and would like to see more engagements in the future,” the PLDT-Smart Foundation President declared.
Malaya Business Insight had a small role in the project introducing the school to Huawei’s PR Head Karrie Buenafe and Huawei VP Guo during a meeting and interview that focused on exploring the technology directions of the company globally.
In that meeting the idea of education and technology came about as Guo discussed initiatives such as the Huawei University–which is a training ground for IT professionals, and its Innova in education programs which run in different countries.
“Huawei is always looking for opportunities to help by using its technology and resources. The Smart School-in-a-Bag going to the Panglima Sailing School is such an opportunity,” Guo said as he indicated that Huawei will continue to support the CSR efforts of PLDT-Smart with regards to education.
Literally a portable classroom inside a waterproof protective bag, the Smart School-in-a-Bag given to the Panglima Sailing School contains 1 Huawei laptop for the use of the teacher and some 10 student tablets all pre-loaded with educational content–including award-winning mother tongue-based interactive apps.
“In behalf of my students at the Panglima Sailing School, we are happy and very fortunate to have been part of this project and to have received the School-in-a-Bag, which is going to be something very new for us in teaching the students here. I am very excited to try it out with the students, and I am sure they will also be excited to learn more from it,” Bunuan commented.
This version of SIAB is one of the latest versions and includes the local Tawi-Tawi dialect in its learning software.
“This is a wonderful gift to the Panglima Sailing School and we are very grateful to the PLDT-Smart, Huawei Technologies, and to Malaya Business Insight for connecting us and keeping our advocacies in mind. We know that we will be able to maximize the use of the School-in-the-Bag and it will be beneficial to all the students,” Dayang said in her acceptance remarks.
The pandemic-resilient strategy supports distance learning and works in both online and offline delivery modalities, and was endorsed by DepEd in 2020.
The content was developed by Smart and academe partners, Central Visayan Institute Foundation-Dynamic Learning Program (CVIF-DLP). The Panglima Sailing School teachers will also receive the CVIF-DLP training. This now proven and pandemic-resilient strategy supports distance learning and works in both online and offline delivery modalities.
The SIAB package also includes a pocket WiFi kit, and other peripherals for school. With these enhancements, the total value of each School-in-a-bag is about P200,000.
In October last year, PLDT also distributed fifteen SIAB packages to the Department of Education (DepEd) in support of the agency’s Basic Education Learning Continuity Plan (BE-LCP), to help ensure continuous learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic. — with Raymond Tribdino
