School Opening Brings Hope to Palawan Tribe

These Kunoy children will no longer have to walk three hours to the nearest public school with the
opening of the CCT-Visions of Hope Christian School in Sitio Kakawitan, Barangay Tagusao,
Quezon, Palawan. Adults in back row are teachers Arlene Langgalot, Leo Badajos, 
Milinda Biolena and Gary Gabinete. 

Jennylyn doesn’t realize it right now, but her life may have just taken a turn for the better. 

Limited Options. Jennylyn belongs to the Kunoy indigenous group of Palawan. She is five. Probably. No one knows exactly how old she is because where she lives, calendars are rare and birth certificates are nonexistent.

Girls here marry nearly as soon as they reach puberty. Illiteracy runs high. The nearest school is more than three hours away on foot, and one has to cross and re-cross a wide stream three times or seven times, depending on which path one chooses to take to get there. The few who manage to get a little education often return to their homes to spend the rest of their lives as slash-and-burn farmers.   

But things are about to change for Jennylyn and for children from the 115 families in the villages of Marayparay and Kakawitan in Barangay Tagusao and Kagay in Barangay Calumpang, Quezon, a town south of Puerto Princesa.   

Medicine and Education. In December 2013, Pastor Cesar Gallarin, executive director of a group called the Friendship Builders visited Sitio Kagay with pastors of the Christ Jesus our Life Church (CJOL) which has been working in Palawan for years. The tribal chieftain they met requested two things: medicine and education for their children. To comply with the request for education, Pastor Santos Batoy and Pastor Joe Ibanez of the Friendship Builders, tribal leader Tarag Almahan and his son Michael, and a certain Liza Vile trained to be teachers in BLESS or Basic Life Empowerment Support System, a literacy program that teaches children to read in 18 to 20 weeks. However, everyone felt that so much more could be done for the Kunoy.

Pastor Joe, whose wife Dina was at that time a teacher of the Visions of Hope Christian School of the Center for Community Transformation (CCT) Group of Ministries suggested that perhaps the two groups could work together. Heads of these organizations met and a partnership was forged. It was agreed that CCT would operate and manage a school for which the Friendship Builders would provide infrastructure. Meanwhile, Father Gregorio Quiboyen, a retired Episcopalian minister, donated a hectare of land central to the three villages and in March 2015 work on a school building began. Cement, roofing sheets, plywood and other construction material were brought to the site by carabao-drawn carts.    

“Please Dream for Your Children.” It was slightly drizzling on June 21, 2015, when families of the Kunoy tribe, barangay officials, and staff and representatives of the Friendship Builders, CCT, CJOL, and the Department of Education  gathered for the dedication of a one-story, three-room school building.   

In a short talk directly addressing parents, Pastor Cesar spoke of a strong desire and vision to educate Kunoy children all the way to college, “But,” he stressed, “We need your support.”  He asked the parents to give due importance to the memory of Tarag Almahan, who, deeply concerned about the future of his tribe, had studied to be a BLESS teacher, but had passed away just a few months earlier.  After announcing that one of the three new classrooms could be temporarily used as living quarters by children who lived far from the school and that food would be provided for them if one of the parents would stay to look after them, Pastor Gallarin ended with a tearful plea: “Please dream for your children.”  

The school in Tagusao is the fourth Visions of Hope school in Palawan. (The other three are in Puerto Princesa.) It will initially offer pre-school education as well as classes in the Alternative Learning System which will allow children and even adults who have a little elementary  education to work toward the equivalent of a grade school diploma.

With God’s intervention in her life through caring people like the Friendship Builders, CJOL and CCT, and if her parents will dream along with her, seven or eight years from now Jennylyn (smallest girl in photo above) will have more options than simply getting married just as soon as she reaches puberty.

(From left) Pastor Jun Castillo of CCT, Father Gregorio Quiboyen,
and Pastor Cesar Gallarin, Friendship Builders executive director,
cut the ribbon at the school inauguration.

Father Quiboyen, retired Episcopal minister and  school site donor,
encourages the Kunoy community to remain united.

Pastor Santos Batoy,using a hand-drawn map (below),
 explains the school location as central to the villages
of Marayparay, Kakawitan and Kagay. 

CCT's Pastor Fidel Presto shares a message based on Psalm 127:1 & 2:
Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it;
Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of
painful labors; for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep.

Members of the Kunoy community, workers of the CCT-Kaibigang Maaasahan
Multi-purpose Cooperative which built the school, Visions of
Hope Christian School teachers, pastors of
the Christ Jesus our Life Church, and representatives of
the Friendship Builders and Center for Community Transformation
Group of Ministries form a circle around the children to dedicate
them and the entire new school year to the Lord.  

Kunoy women perform the tarak dance to the beat of an
agong (left) and sanang.  The dance expresses thanks to the Lord.

Federico Gacasa Jr., Department of Education District Supervisor,
offers to help the Visions of Hope Christian School meet its
its DepEd requirements.