The Antipolo Seminary Foundation, Inc.(ASF) is a social development organization established by the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer - Vice-Province of Manila, more popularly known as the Redemptorists.

The ASF seeks to contribute in alleviating the condition of the poorest members of the Philippine population in selected areas of Luzon. They are the subsistence fisherfolk, landless peasants and farm workers, and urban and rural poor settlers.

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Learning Centers Benefit from School Supplies and Education Materials

Community organization leaders, teachers and key parent-teacher association officials from six (6) pre-school learning centers, in urban poor communities in Marikina and Rizal, gratefully received from the Antipolo Seminary Foundation school supplies and learning amterials on September 4, 2009 and December 4, 2009. Each of these learning centers was established and is being managed by a community organization. They have meager resources since they require minimal fees — approximately 30% of which are left unpaid by the students' parents due to financial difficulties. The purchase of these supplies was made possible through a donation from the Makati Rotary Club Foundation.

The pre-school centers that benefited from this are: BCNAI daycare center in Banaba extension, San Mateo, Rizal (16 students); Iwahig learning center in Tumana, Marikina (60 students); Molave daycare in Parang, Marikina (23 students); NKK South Libis daycare center in South Libis, Banaba, San Mateo, Rizal (50 students); Guinayang learning center in Guinayang, San Mateo, Rizal (56 students); and Minahan learning center in Malanday, Marikina (69 students). A total of 274 students benefited from these materials. According to the teachers, these materials help in eliciting the interest and prolong the attention span of the students. These also motivate students to participate in class activities. The cabinets are used to organize and store these centers' school supplies and educational materials. They also help in protecting these materials since some of these centers are not fully enclosed with four walls.

The materials received by these daycare centers' officials include: charts and posters that illustrate concepts such as shapes, colors, plants, animals, the Human Body, Philippine Map, Anyong Lupa, Anyong Tubig; number and alphabet flash cards; illustrated story books; toys and materials for art activities; three-layer storage cabinets; and, pencils, pad papers and crayons. The need for these educational materials and school supplies was determined through meetings with teachers and community officers.

These supplies and materials, including the crayons, pencils and pad papers, were stored in the learning center and managed by the teacher and community officers. It was hoped that this practice will maximize the number of semesters these materials can be used. This will also cut down center expenses by minimizing their need to buy supplies and educational materials every semester.

Tropical storm Ondoy (international name-- Ketsena) flooded most of Marikina, San Mateo and other low-lying parts of Metro Manila and Rizal in September 26, 2009. All six communities were submerged in flood water and debris. Four (4) learning centers that received their supplies in September 4, 2009 lost all their supplies and materials.

It was fortunate that a second batch of materials were distributed in December 2009. This helped them in resuming classes in their centers. The community organizations restarted their learning centers' operation with almost nothing but hope and the will to provide relevant services to alleviate their condition of residents in their communities, especially the children.

The ASF believes that education is an effective tool in transforming the lives of the poor. Its program provides specific interventions to realize this desired change. At the community level, ASF assists in developing the capacity and capability of local community organizations to manage their organization, projects and resources. The assistance we extend to our beneficiaries and partner organizations includes training seminars and informal inputs such as "on-the-job" training activities. The range of topics covered by these include planning, monitoring and evaluation, finance management and specific project-oriented technologies.    read more...

The pre-school children in our learning centers in depressed urban communities enthusiastically attend their classes. In these classes, they are able to learn, together with their playmates, the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic. They also eagerly await for the supplemental feeding activity of each session, often playing guessing games on what will be served.

The learning center teachers often share with us cases of student inattentiveness in their class sessions. These students, they say, are often quiet and usually seems sleepy in class. When a teacher queried a student in a morning class, the child candidly replied that he was feeling weak and hungry because he has not eaten anything since dinner the previous night. Their family's dinner, he shared with his teacher, consisted of rice left-over from the day's lunch, a two-peso pouch of coffee and three pesos worth of sugar. The coffee and sugar were mixed with hot water and then mixed with the rice for taste. When they have no money, he added, they skip using coffee and sugar and just add plenty of water and some salt to the rice and heat it until it becomes porridge-like. Breakfast is often skipped. In other cases, a single pack of instant noodles and rice serves as the meal for some families

Though this may seem to be an extreme image of poverty to some of you, it is a reality encountered by some children in our partner communities and other impoverished communities. Some of these families subsist on an income of less than P1,000.00 a month. Most are irregularly employed, contractual or seasonal workers doing odd jobs to subsist. Their children are most affected by their poverty.

In one community, a teacher noted that more than five students were forced to quit school due to a health problem that is usually attributed to poor nutrition. Follow-through on these cases is often difficult since most of these move out of the community to settle, perhaps also temporarily, in other urban poor communities nearer possible sources of income.

It is thus not surprising to see the student's eagerness for "merienda" or supplemental feeding. To some of them, "Merienda" at the school is breakfast and perhaps heavily supplements both lunch and dinner.

We recognize and stress to our partners that our program's supplemental feeding component, that costs P7.50 to P10 per child per session, is not enough to address malnutrition. Thus, we also teach the parents how to prepare low-cost but nutritious and balanced meals. However, given their lack of financial resources, we can only hope to delay the degradation of milder malnutrition cases and enable to families to prepare nourishing, low-cost meals whenever their resources allows it.

Ultimately, we pray that the five-peso meal currently being experienced by some of our beneficiaries can be addressed through their own initiatives to improve their socio-economic condition. This requires the creation of more employment or income generating opportunities. Only through these can these families provide for their basic needs and ensure the children's normal physical and intellectual development.