Meralco boosts education advocacies

MANILA, Philippines - The Manila Electric Company (Meralco) is beefing up its efforts to bring its school electrification program and other education-related advocacies to more public schools in marginalized communities nationwide through its social development arm, One Meralco Foundation (OMF).

Since 2011, OMF has been energizing public schools in remote island and mountain communities beyond the reach of electric distribution facilities. The foundation does this through solar photovoltaic technology.

“In each beneficiary school, we install a one to two-kilowatt solar photovoltaic system, which allows teachers to use technology to step up their traditional pedagogy. The students also are able to have a hands-on experience in technology because Meralco employees donate multimedia equipment including a laptop computer to every school our foundation energizes,” explained OMF President Jeffrey O. Tarayao.

One Meralco Foundation’s school electrification program has so far energized 153 public schools nationwide. This number is expected to reach 170 at the end of the year.

Among the remotest schools recently energized under the program is the Laud Sitangkai Annex Elementary School in Tawi-Tawi. It is located in the island of Sitangkai, which is the southernmost tip of Tawi-Tawi and closer to Malaysia than it is to Bongao, the province’s de facto capital.

Last year, OMF commissioned the University of the Philippines Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation Inc. (UPPAF) to conduct an independent impact assessment of the program.

According to the study, the electrification program has greatly improved the learning conditions in the schools and has helped teachers modernize the way they discuss especially science and technology topics in class.

“It also enables the school to obtain more teaching equipment, such as televisions, projectors, laptops, microphones, etc. This in turn allows them to use multi-media content which complements their curricula in many subjects (e.g. English, Science, Math, Filipino, Music, AP, etc.). This is similar to what has been reported in other countries (UNDESA, 2014). In turn, the richer content, is often also more interesting, more engaging and helps generate more interest and motivation among students,” the report said.

“Its other impact on teaching has been to reduce the preparation time and costs for teachers (though this did not consider the cost of getting a laptop). They said it was less costly because they no longer had to spend on photocopying, or pay for transportation to use a computer, or spend on materials such as manila paper. They also have an easier time organizing their materials and do not have to keep preparing the same materials manually on manila paper, or re-write it on the board,” it added.

Last month, OMF’s school electrification program received the Gold Stevie award from the International Business Awards for being the best Corporate Social Responsibility program in Asia, Australia and New Zealand. The award was given in Rome, Italy.

“We are very honored to have received such distinction. It somehow serves as an assurance for us that we are doing the right thing,” expressed Tarayao. “All the more, this inspires all of us in Meralco to ‘spread the light’ to the darkest, most underserved communities within and beyond the Meralco franchise area.

Empowering public school teachers

To complement its school electrification program, OMF pioneered an advocacy to promote energy education to Filipino youth by training teachers to develop localized learning materials on energy, and incorporating them, as an additional resource, in the K to 12 curriculum of the Department of Education (DepEd).

Dubbed “Energy Education” or “EnergyEd,” the program began building its foundations by partnering with the Cebu-based Coalition for Better Education (CBE) to train select public school teachers in developing a 200-piece flashcard kit which could be used as an aide in teaching complex energy concepts from Grades 4 to 10.

The kit includes knowledge cards, which are question-and-answer type of flash cards; activity cards, which allows students to absorb energy lessons based on their actual experience; and project-based learning cards, which allows students to learn on their own by conducting research and experiments, and working as a team to try to address real-life situations involving energy.

This December, the first 200 of these kits will be distributed to select public schools in the Meralco franchise area. OMF plans to distribute all 1,000 kits by first quarter of 2017.