AROUND 200 people from Mondelez Philippines once gain left behind their office desks on October 10 to spend the day with the company’s Joy Schools program beneficiaries.
The Joy Schools program is Mondelez Philippines’s corporate social responsibility initiative that hopes to create joyful centers of learning and make its adopted schools a part of the Top 10 in their respective cities.
At present, six schools have already been adopted—with five in Metro Manila, namely, Bayanan Main Elementary School, Padre Zamora Elementary School, P. Manalo Elementary School, Vicente Lim Elementary School and Sampaloc Site II Elementary School; and one in Tacloban, the Panalaron Central Elementary School.
The people of the company have been doing their share in creating joy for the schools through the “Share Joy” day for the past three years. For this year, all volunteers were once again divided into groups to visit the company’s five adopted schools in Metro Manila.
The groups were then tasked to come up with activities that would help address their assigned school’s main concerns.
In Bayanan Main Elementary School, the assigned volunteers from Mondelez Philippines executed a fun-filled activity to help review the Grade 6 pupils for their upcoming National Aptitude Test (NAT) exams.
The volunteers crafted a unique board game inspired by a NAT reviewer, and tested them on the enthusiastic students. Afterward, sets of the board game and other school supplies were handed officially to the school so the students can continue to review in the coming weeks.
“After Sampaloc Site II Elementary School—the first-ever adopted school of Mondelez Philippines under the Joy Schools program—ranked No. 1 among all public elementary schools in Parañaque City during the 2013-2014 NAT results, we got more inspired to help the other beneficiaries strive for excellence,” said Maria Cindy C. Lim, head of Corporate and Government Affairs at Mondelez Philippines.
“We hope that this board game, which we call BraiNATomy, would encourage the students to review for their NAT exams, and that they would realize that reviewing for an exam can also be fun,” Lim added. “Our passion as a company is to create delicious moments of joy,” shared Michelle Leslie Pablo, one volunteer at Bayanan Main Elementary School in Muntinlupa.
“While we’re allowed to pursue this joy inside the office through career-growth opportunities, activities like the Share Joy day allow us to nurture our values by putting them into practice for the benefit of other people.”
The Share Joy day is just one of the company’s initiatives for Bayanan Main Elementary School. As part of its three-year commitment to the school, Mondelez Philippines also conducts a feeding program for the students twice a week, initiates occasional training seminars for the teachers, and teaches parents to plant vegetables in their own backyards to encourage their children to eat properly.
Artemio B. Basco, master teacher 1 at Bayanan Elementary School Main, expressed the school’s gratefulness for being chosen as one of Mondelez Philippines’s main beneficiaries.
“We have more than 3,000 students at the moment, and it means a lot to us to gain support from the company. We really appreciate how the program is for the long term, and it’s not just for the kids, but for the entirety of the school—for the teachers, the facilities and even the parents.” On the other hand, Ma. Elena Espinosa, mother of three children, shared the difference that the Joy Schools program has done for her family. “May mga oras po talaga na walang pambaon ang mga anak ko. Kaya minsan pumapasok sila ng walang laman ang tiyan. Malaki po ang naitutulong ng program sa amin [There are times when my children don’t have an allowance, so sometimes they go to school with an empty stomach. The program has greatly helped us].”
She specifically shared about how the program taught parents to plant in their own backyards.
“Napapakain na din po namin ng gulay ’yung mga bata. Ngayon nga po mahilig na sila sa gulay, so masigla na sila sa pagpasok. Nakakatipid din kasi di na namin kailangan bumili pa ng gulay sa palengke [We are now able to make the children eat vegetables.
They now prefer eating vegetables, so they have become more eager to come to school. We also get to save because we no longer need to buy vegetables at the market].”
“Gusto ko makapag-aral ng maayos ang mga anak ko. Na hindi magiging hadlang’ yung situation namin ngayon sa kinabukasan nila. Gusto ko silang lumaki na maraming natutunan sa eskwelahan para makakuha sila ng magandang trabaho [I want my children to get proper education, that our situation wouldn’t be a hindrance to their future.
I want them to grow learning a lot of things at school so that they will get a desirable job],” she finally said.
Meanwhile in other beneficiary schools, volunteers also came up with activities to share joy with the students.
The volunteers over at Sampaloc Site II Elementary School repainted old and faded murals all over the school to ensure that students are greeted by a colorful and inspiring learning environment every day.
In General Vicente Lim Elementary School, volunteers helped the school deal with a flooding problem, while in Padre Zamora Elementary School, employee volunteers created an interactive and fun game also to help review students for the NAT.
While it’s true that the tasks these volunteers have accomplished were not easy, the fulfillment in sharing joy and giving students the chance to a brighter future, becomes the motivation.
“We are striving real hard to make sure that the Joy Schools program will greatly benefit the schools for a long time. It’s all about sustaining the things that we have started. Right now, we are concentrating in our 6 adopted schools so as to ensure that we achieve the goal we have set out – to make our adopted schools excellent in their respective areas,” said Lim.
And for all the company’s efforts, Basco, as with the rest of the teachers in the adopted schools, have this to say: “What we want is for a time to come when the students will graduate and excel in their chosen careers. And hopefully, we could present them to Mondelez, and tell them, ‘these are the students you have greatly helped. Look at how far they’ve come.”
To know more about how Mondelez Philippines creates delicious moments of joy, visit https://ph.mondelezinternational.com.
Image credits: Jeahan Virda B. De Barras