THE Department of Education (DepEd), in partnership with foreign governments and the private sector, has intensified efforts to improve access to quality education and open jobs for children and out-of-school youth in Mindanao, particularly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said DepEd is steadily mobilizing support for education and livelihood programs in Mindanao with support from the USAID’s Education Quality and Access for Learning and Livelihood Skills (Equalls), the Australian Agency for International Development and other foreign and local agencies.

“There is an urgent need for a stronger public-private sector alliance to meet the education needs of Mindanao, especially in the ARMM.  A framework to pool various initiatives into one program assures efficiency and effectiveness,” Lapus said.

The Equalls-supported alternative basic-education and livelihood-skills programs are provided to youths who have dropped out of school with an opportunity to reenter the formal education system or receive livelihood training and work experience.

Equalls support program for out-of-school children and youth (OSCY) is the largest in the country with a target of 100,000 OSCY.

Records showed that Equalls, in partnership with DepEd and education officials in ARMM, has helped improve the quality of education of some 480,000 public elementary students in Mindanao.

The partnership also provided trainings to nearly 10,000 educators in the teaching of English, science and math and provided almost two million books in Mindanao schools.

Part of the program includes the improvement of training for teachers, development of training materials and   mobilizing school-level support by providing managerial and leadership training to school principals.

Another intervention program adopted was the Text to Teach project of the Ayala Foundation and Nokia, which aimed to improve the teaching of English, mathematics and science among Grades 5 and 6 pupils in 13 selected public schools and one private school in Cotabato City.

THE government admitted that it cannot go all-out for micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) financing due to the country’s current fiscal position and will have to rely more on the private sector to provide lending at this time.

SAN FRANCISCO, California—Filipino organizations here are raising funds to help uplift the lives of poor children in the Philippines but are making sure that the assistance they send reaches the intended beneficiaries.

BANGKOK—Thailand’s leading conglomerate, the Siam Cement Group (SCG), is studying its expansion options in the Philippines despite high production costs.

The Philippines’ palay production for the fourth quarter may grow by 10 percent year-on-year and enable the Department of Agriculture (DA) to reach its target of producing 16.2 million metric tons (MMT) of palay for 2007.

THE Department of Education (DepEd), in partnership with foreign governments and the private sector, has intensified efforts to improve access to quality education and open jobs for children and out-of-school youth in Mindanao, particularly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).