Private firm cited for extensive South Cotabato pro-education projects

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The South Cotabato Schools Division had awarded a private firm a citation for supporting the programs of the education department in ancestral lands of indigenous tribes and in enclaves of settler communities in the province.

Radio reports on Thursday, June 25, stated that two representatives of the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated (SMI), Jocelyn Maria Hectin and Lerita Malayon, together received the award during the 2026 Stakeholders’ Convergence event of the South Cotabato Schools Division in a function facility in Koronadal City on Thursday last week.

Hectin and Malayon are SMI’s community relations senior superintendent and community development supervisor, respectively. They are both directly involved in the company’s community service projects in the municipalities of Tampakan in South Cotabato, in Columbio in Sultan Kudarat and in Malungon in Sarangani, all in Region 12, and in Kiblawan in Davao del Sur in Region 11.

The citation plaque for SMI that Hectin and Malayon received from provincial education officials, recognizing the mining firm as their “Dreamweaver Partner,” was signed by the superintendent of schools in South Cotabato, Leonardo Balala, the top official in the province of the Department of Education 12.

Balala and his subordinate-education officials in South Cotabato were quoted in Thursday’s radio reports in Central Mindanao as saying that the SMI deserved the citation, as their tacit appreciation of its extensive programs benefiting schools in far-flung areas as part of its corporate social responsibility thrusts.

Local executives, among them the vice mayors Joel Calma and Maria Theresa Constantino of Kiblawan and Malungon, respectively, had separately confirmed to reporters that SMI had produced 939 professionals in the past eight years, mostly from marginalized ethnic Blaan families, via its company college scholarship program.

They are now employed as teachers, serving as elected barangay and municipal officials, as veterinarians of local government units and private companies, nurses in hospitals in Central Mindanao and abroad and as engineers in construction companies and in government agencies, according to the two vice mayors and officials of DepEd 12.

The SMI is expected to start operating, possibly before 2028, the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project in the mineral-rich Tampakan town in South Cotabato, as contracted by the national government, with separate written consents from the Blaan tribal leaders in the municipality and the central office of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples.

South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. and the chief of their Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, the nurse Rolly Aquino, separately said on Thursday that the SMI also has ongoing feeding and health support initiatives for malnourished school children and pregnant women in villages around campuses in Tampakan and in nearby towns.

“That is despite its not not even having started yet its state-permitted copper and gold extraction in Tampakan,” Aquino said.

Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza, chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, said she is aware of SMI’s capacity-building projects aiming to improve the productivity of barangay folks engaged commercial food production, livestock raising and other income-generating livelihood projects in remote areas in Region 12’s Sultan Kudarat and South Cotabato provinces.

"We appreciate the company's pro-education and community empowerment projects in Sultan Kudarat and in South Cotabato," Taliño-Mendoza said.