Last year, we had reported that the Grade 2 materials were complete, debugged and improved; that Grade 3 materials were complete; and Grade 4 materials were under development. We’re happy to report that as of March 2010, Grades 2, 3, 4, and 5 materials are complete and Grade 6 materials are currently being completed.

The development team continues to be supervised by Ella Cruz-Aguila on part-time basis, given her request to take partial leave. The roll-out responsibility has been taken over by Rachel Tanaka, with assistance from Malue Gal.

To measure how effective the iSipnayan program had been at Bagumbayan Elem, the program’s pilot school, the team religiously gives a second diagnostic exam 6-8 months after the first diagnostic test. Over the past two years, the measured difference in scores after six to eight months into the program have been phenomenal. Of the 27students measured, scores improved anywhere from 6% (64 to 68) to 157% (from 35 to 90). The average improvement was an impressive 44%. As with the Kumon Math program, iSipnayan parents unanimously noted the jump in discipline and concentration of their children, the increased speed in doing sums in their heads, and the boost in selfconfidence when it came to math.

The second surprise donation was from a former classmate of Bing del Rosario at the Asian Institute of Technology, Ahmed Saber. They had taken up Computer Science together back in 1979-1980 in the Bangkok campus. The classmates recently had a reunion last February 2010 in Sydney which is where Ahmed, a Bangladeshi turned Australian, lives with wife Hamida and kids Asif, Asma, and daughter-inlaw Leena. Ahmed donated AUS$600 to the Foundation’s cause.

The Foundation thanks Rita Cruz and Ahmed Saber for their generosity.

• The full replacement of the folding door or “varifold” that separates the video screening area from the main student reading area. This fix would include shortening the varifold and replace much of the previous width with a fixed partition.

• Repair of several student reading chairs where the plastic seat backs had been unglued from their back posts. This would involve putting screws into all the chair posts.

• Repair of several teacher reading chairs where the wooden seat backs had completely dislodged from the metal seat posts. The fix would require a complete replacement of the seat backs.

• The replacement of the tops of bag-shoe cabinet no. 1, which had warped due to students constantly placing cold drinks on top. Instead of formica, which tends to warp with liquids, tiles will now be used.

• Repainting of the computer room ceiling to replace the fallen patch caused by incessant rains of typhoon Ondoy and Pepeng.

• Patch up of book cabinet edges that had been torn due to getting caught in students’ clothes.

• Washing-repainting of two wall sections with the most visible children’s handprints.

• Replacement of the malfunctioning DVD player and TV set. The repairs are scheduled for April when the school is on summer break and the repair crew can work uninterrupted.

BES is also the pilot site for the computer literacy program during the summer months of April and May 2010.

The other major assistance area is the library. The Foundation commits to the regular inspection and maintenance of the library facilities and equipment. (see the separate article on library repairs already identified).

A new commitment this year is the building of a 2 sq.m. toilet cubicle inside the kindergarten room, which should in future reduce the downtime when the kinder teacher has to accompany a child to do his or her toilet.

Also, Bing del Rosario has pledged to provide math and English workbooks to supplement the basic instructions and verbal drills.

Bing del Rosario visited the Bagumbayan area on October 3 and found that over 600 families had been evacuated from their shanty homes near the Marikina River and given temporary space in both Bagumbayan Elementary School (250 families) and the barangay basketball court (350 families). The barangay captain, Dr. Elmer Maturan, had mobilized his staff to secure relief goods and cook food for the evacuees. Taking cognizance of their plight, Bing donated P60,000 in cash to the barangay to assist in purchasing of basic necessities – slippers, shorts, t-shirts, plastic sheets, and cooking supplies. “Your donation was so welcome and appreciated – it really helped Bagumbayan since we were already running low on funds,” Elmer “Doc” Maturan said.

Bing also visited Libis Elementary School. Although it wasn’t transformed into an evacuation center, a great percentage of the Libis student population belonged to shanty families who lived beside the Marikina River just half a kilometer away. With the swollen waters of Marikina River flooding into their homes, some 150 children had lost their schoolbags, schoolbooks, and clothes. The children started trooping back to class – barefoot, wearing overworn sandos, dirty house shorts, and clutching plastic bags that now served as their schoolbags.

So the appeal came from principal Thelma Co – could One Small Step Forward Foundation help these students? And the Foundation answered positively. It put up a P20,000 fund which the school special committee used to buy Divisoria-sourced boys’ and girls’ white shirts (two sets each for 40 kids), notebooks, pencils and writing pads for 150 students, slippers (a pair each for 30 kids), and underwear (3 pieces each for 50
kids). This example inspired another donor organization, the Ladies of Charity, prompting them to provide similar assistance the week after to Libis Elementary School.

The actual “start” began in early December 2009 when OSSFF visited the new principal Nitz Pangilinan. Bing del Rosario was already on very good terms with Nitz since 2004 when the del Rosario’s built the state-of-the-art library for Bagumbayan Elementary School when Nitz was still the principal. They then followed Nitz to Sto, Cristo Elementary School where they put up intervention programs to bring up the literacy of the laggard sections of Grades 2 and 3. And when Nitz was assigned to Mines Elementary School, the Foundation donated a much-needed photocopier. So iSipnayan was an “easy sell”, especially given Principal Pangilinan’s focus on academic performance. But never a dictator, Nitz scheduled two sessions with her top teachers so that the OSSFF officers could talk about the program and the teachers could make up their own minds.

With the PTES teachers on board, the next step was for iSipnayan teachers Ella Cruz-Aguila and Rachel Tanaka to give out flyers and application forms, interview the parent applicants, schedule the diagnostic exams, and select the first 20 students for the summer. The diagnostic exams were given to nearly 100 students of Grades 1 to 3 in late January and early February 2010.

Despite the modest start, the plan is to quickly ramp up in June and July, getting to 100 students before November. There are some 80 students in the wait list but the schedule is to provide diagnostic exams to the top two sections of Grades 1, 2, and 3 in March – easily 180 more – so that the iSipnayan team can have 250 students to choose from for the next 80 students to come on board the program in June-July and October- November. By 2013, assuming everything goes well, the Foundation envisions 700 to 800 pupils in the math program.

The iSipnayan program is currently being held in the school’s LEAP room, with iSipnayan teachers Rachel Tanaka and Malue Gal in charge. When the enrolment jumps to 100, the Foundation expects to pick up volunteer teachers and parents as part-time proctors.

In addition, the netbooks are preequipped with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher. They will also use Internet Explorer and Picture Manager which are built into the XP operating system. The units are also loaded with Google and anti-virus software. To assist the children in learning how to save to and read from various media, the order also includes twelve 2G USB drives and a shared external DVD writer. So the workshop attendees get to keep what they create, the purchase also included a Brother all-in one printer.

The Asus eee PC 1005ha was a CNET Editor’s Choice awardee in June 2009. CNET said, “Asus hits nearly all the marks in the 1005HA, the latest version of its iconic Eee PC, highlighted by a 6-hour-plus battery life.”

In a partnering deal, OSSFF’s Bing del Rosario secured a discount and service concessions from good friend and Columbia Technologies President Asay Ramos.

The Asus netbooks will be the mainstay for the computer literacy program, a new thrust of the One Small Step Forward Foundation. In the program, which will come with 30-, 40- and 80-hour versions, elementary school graders will get a chance to learn the popular productivity software and internet surfing tools. They will also get exposed to operating system concepts and commands. Kids being kids, the developers expect that the students will find Microsoft Publisher the most interesting, giving them the ability to make greeting cards, banners, posters, and name tags. With 12 netbooks, classes can be either 12 or 24, depending on whether it’s one-to-one or two students to one PC.

For the summer of 2010, the program will be piloted at Bagumbayan Elementary School. Three two-week free classes had been scheduled: April 12 to April 23, followed by a May 3 to May 14 session, and finally, a May 17 to May 28 session. The principal of Bagumbayan Elementary School, Ms. Merlin Villegas, has already announced the summer classes and the school had begun accepting registrants. The lead instructor is Emil Marquez, the elibrarian for the school, with Bing del Rosario personally supporting the classes for some of the days.

By design, a free week had been inserted between the first and second offering to allow the developers to tweak the material and exercises in time for the 2nd and 3rd offering. The materials are expected to undergo another major tweaking in June before being offered to the other schools.

“The three BES summer offerings are just the pilots,” according to OSSFF president Bing del Rosario. “The vision is to be able to roll the program out quickly to the rest of Bagumbayan Elementary School and then to other schools and hit 12 to 24 students at a time. If we deem the program highly successful, we may quickly ramp up with another two to three dozen netbooks. So our ability to roll out will only depend on the number of e-librarian instructor types we can find for the schools.”

A Vicious Cycle. Bing learned that section 4 was always the dumping ground of the low IQ and the unmotivated or problematic children. That the effort needed to handle 60 Section 1 students is ¼ the effort needed to handle 60 section 4 students; and unfortunately, the best teachers get assigned the best (Section 1) sections, and conversely, the worst teachers handle the poorest sections. That despite loud claims to contrary, there are not enough textbooks to go around. That there was a high correlation between economic prosperity and sectioning, with the children of the poorest parents tending to be in Section 4.

This poverty results in a whole new set of problems. For example, parents are unable to provide their children with pads, notebooks and pencils. When the Section 1 teacher writes on the board, the Section 1 students start copying. When the Section 4 teacher starts writing, almost no one is copying since they have nothing to copy with. Also, absenteeism is highest, sometimes reaching 50%, because some parents prefer that their children take time off from school to earn money by peddling sampaguitas or flannel wipes. These are the same parents for whom getting kids educated is lower priority vis-à-vis day-to-day survival. Thirdly, children are often malnourished – section 4 children had actually fainted in class from actual hunger.

A Host of Interventions. What One Small Step Forward Foundation I did last year was to cut up section 4 – a class of 50 – into three groups during Filipino and English hours and paid the allowances of two extra teachers. All the textbooks were photocopied and each student was given a complete set. Phonetic, mnemonic and audio-visual learning aids were purchased. Plus, each section 4 child was given a schoolbag – with notebook, pad, pencils, eraser, crayons, illustration board-blackboard, and ruler inside. Finally, the Foundation mounted a modest feeding program, with each child in the section being fed a cup of noodles three times a week. The intervention was an unqualified success. At the end of the year (March 2006), 95% of the children had hurdled the literacy achievement test.

A New Problem. In September 2006, principal Nitz Pangilinan again approached the Foundation for help. She had the same literacy dilemma with Grade 2, because all first graders last year were promoted to grade 2, based on assurances from parents of 35 illiterate children that they would coach their children in the summer months. Not too coincidentally, the 35 kids belonged to the poorest families, had the highest absenteeism records, and had major social skill deficiencies. But testing in the first month revealed that there had been no progress made; the parents had not kept their part of the bargain. So Sto. Cristo was again faced with the distinct possibility of the equivalent of an entire section of students finishing grade 2 without being able to read with comprehension.

Accenture Intervenes. Bing discussed the problem with Accenture and it struck a sympathetic chord with the organization’s senior executives. Accenture agreed to provide financial support for the planned “intervention”, similar to what the Foundation had mounted the year before. At the Foundation’s request, the school pulled the 35 problematic children out of the four regular sections, created a new “section 5” and hired a new teacher, Miss Gigi Socano, at a contractual salary of P5,000 monthly, to handle the class. Additional reading and language workbooks were purchased for each student. In addition, every child was provided a full set of school supplies. Finally, the school was asked to provide a three-times-weekly feeding program for the 35 students – plus 15 other severely malnourished kids from the other Grade 2 sections – to be prepared by the school’s HE department, with a budget of P15 per meal, or roughly P10,000 monthly, excluding the cook’s allowance. Based on last year’s experience, Bing is confident that the special attention will achieve the objectives. Already, absenteeism has dropped to below 20% and the teacher reports a significant increase in interest and motivation levels for 25 of the 35. Accenture’s Nescel had met with the principal and the assigned teacher twice and met the kids once already. She also witnessed the feeding program in action last November 6, 2006.