Multi-sector education program cited for good results

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Community leaders, local executives and a private firm have, from 2003 to this year, produced 1,635 college graduates from four Mindanao towns via a multi-sector education program and more of its current scholars are expected to graduate from tertiary schools soon, local officials said.

Radio reports in Central Mindanao on Saturday, November 7, stated that the community-empowerment initiative involves local executives and traditional leaders in Tampakan in South Cotabato, Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, Malungon in Sarangani and Kiblawan in Davao del Sur and the Sagittarius Mines Inc., most known as the SMI.

Two provincial governors, Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza of Cotabato and her counterpart in South Cotabato, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr., separately said on Saturday that the scholarship program augurs well with the efforts of their offices that are aimed at boosting the government's peace promotion and anti-poverty initiatives in remote areas in Region 12.

Taliño-Mendoza, chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, said helping provide residents in the four towns with quality education, for free, can help hasten peace and sustainable development in their barangays. 

Local executives, among them the vice mayors Joel Calma and Maria Theresa Constantino of Kiblawan and Malungon, respectively, had separately told reporters that many of the beneficiaries of the SMI’s multi-sector education thrust, as part of its corporate social responsibility program, are now teachers in remote public schools in their municipalities.

Tamayo,  also presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Regional Peace and Order Council 12, said the education program of the SMI and local executives in the four towns helped restore law and order in hinterlands in Region 12 where rogue members of the now defunct News People’s Army once operated with impunity.

“It is something that other private firms in our region should emulate,” Tamayo, now in his third and last term as provincial governor, said.

Among the teachers who had finished teaching courses via the education program funded by the SMI are Gelemi Villaram and Pinky Simbag, who had returned to their barangays in Kiblawan and Tampakan, respectively, to teach in public schools.

“Some of them have returned to their hometowns to work in their barangay and municipal governments. Some were elected as barangay officials while some others, who became veterinarians and engineers, are now working in private firms,” Tamayo said.

Records obtained from local executives in Tampakan, Columbio, Malungon and Kiblawan indicate that 728 of the more than a thousand beneficiaries of the education program since 2003 had returned to their respective municipalities to work.

Constantino, who had served as mayor of Malungon prior to her election as vice mayor during the 2025 local elections, said a number of the scholars from the Blaan tribal enclaves under their local government unit are now barangay and municipal health workers and teachers in areas under its jurisdiction.

“In South Cotabato, many of the professionals who had finished college in different schools as beneficiaries of the education program are very supportive of our calamity and disaster response operations,” said the nurse Rolly Aquino, chief of the South Cotabato Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.