SOWING SEEDS OF HOPE
“A Partnership of MMES and BINHI Foundation”
The stakeholder-partners play an important role in the realization of the school’s programs and projects. To create effective education systems and effective learning environments, all stakeholders need to come together in a meaningful way, through collaboration and therefore connection.
Marcela Marcelo Elementary School was blessed to work with the BINHI English Literacy Foundation for the past two years. BINHI is a non-profit and non-governmental organization founded in 2008 to help out-of-school children and students who are at risk of not completing their primary education due to the absence of learning support in their homes and community. The journey of a partnership between MMES and BINHI started in 2018. Series of meetings between Mr. Noel F. Junio, the former Principal, and Ms. Lisa T. Bayot, President and Co-Founder of BINHI was made. However, the partnership wasn’t able to materialize due to a change of leadership of the school. In early 2019, the partnership was sealed under the new leadership of Ms. Norma B. Jamon and sponsorship of the Light Rail Manila Corporation (LRMC) and Mr. Cecile Dela Cruz. The program aims to keep the children in school by providing their literacy skills, fostering a love for reading and improve comprehension skills, and inculcating a love for learning that will inspire them to do better in school and subsequently improve their economic situation. The program was so timely as the school strengthened its effort in addressing problems in reading proficiency in all grade levels. Prior to the partnership, the school has implemented various reading intervention projects, however, there is still a need to maximize the school’s effort to attain zero non-readers in school. This English literacy support is a greatly needed intervention program for struggling readers to attain the zero non-readers of the school.
As MMES and BINHI were about to embark on a new journey for the school year 2019-2020 in June 2019, the unexpected pandemic seemed to derail once again the well-planned implementation of the reading intervention program. But with the persistence of the leadership of the school and the eagerness of the BINHI to make every Filipino child in school and learning well, the project was pushed through tailored to the new normal education set up. The components of the curriculum include teaching tools (modules, activity sheets, various school supplies, instructional USB flash drive); assessments (pre-test, mid-test, post-test); monitoring of students; inputs on lesson plans; evaluation, and recommendation. The program was modified and maximized for the online and modular learning setup required by the Department of education given the pandemic situation.
The first year of implementation of the BINHI program in October 2019 was very challenging. BINHI came up with the Class Home Kit to continue providing learning support to its 39 beneficiaries, 20 kindergartens for Early Reading and 19 Grade two learners for Beginning Reading. A BINHI Class Home Kit contains instructional videos, school supplies, arts and craft materials, and also enjoyable activity sheets related to the lessons. The materials and lessons are good for 4 weeks. They were distributed to the parents every month. BINHI teachers were also provided materials for their online teaching. At the beginning of the program, there were a total of 42 students for the 2 classes. 20 for Kit 0 and 22 for Kit 1. By midterm, there were 3 students who dropped from Kit 1 class. At the end of the program, there were 20 and 19 students respectively, totaling 39. This translates to a 7.5% decrease in overall student participation. Dropouts were due to disinterest or inability to come to school to get the learning kits. However, the results of the post-test revealed a great improvement in reading comprehension of Kit 0 learners with 23.1% during the pre-test compare to 83% in the post-test or an overwhelming 59.9% increase. On the other hand, the Kit 1 learners also recorded a great improvement of 40.8% with 30.6% and 71.4% during the pre and post-test respectively.
The parents also expressed their gratitude to the BINHI English Literacy Foundation as it helped so much in developing their children to read, write and comprehend. It also awakened the interest of the children and inculcated the value of reading among the children. According to the parents, their children develop as well good study habits and interest in reading books ahead of their age. The program also strengthened partnership with the parents, school, and stakeholder-partners as they geared towards one objective, to let the children read and write.