CEDAW: What now?

How far gone are Filipino women in their struggle for equality? Or, to put it another way, are Filipino women still being discriminated against?

That is the big question that media and business tackled at a forum on "women’s rights, the role of media and business" held at the Dusit Hotel Nikko Friday under the sponsorship of Women’s Features Service and the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) with support from the Untied Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The forum’s main thrust was to re-introduce a 26-year old treaty that promote women’s human rights called CEDAW – the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Ambassador Rosario Manalo, the first Filipina and current chair of the United Nations CEDAW committee, explained CEDAW, said the treaty was initiated by the Philippines who was then represented by former Sen. Helena Benitez and then by Sen. Leticia Ramos-Shahani in the Commission on the Status of Women in the ’60s. CEDAW was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 and became a treaty on Sept. 3, 1961. As of March this year, 182 countries ratified the Women’s Convention.

On whether Filipinas are still being discriminated against, presentors at the forum talked about poverty, media bias, unhealthy workplace conditions, and the absence of a divorce law, inadequate information and poor access to health services as discriminatory against women.

NCRFW Executive Director Emmalina Verzosa gave media practitioners from print and broadcast, advertising and broadcast executives and top managers from the private sector some idea of the Philippine report to the CEDAW Committee. Each State Party, she said, reports to the Committee every four years on its compliance on its implementation of CEDAW. CEDAW obligates the state parties to repeal all discriminatory laws including cultural and social practices that discriminate against women. The report for August 2008 is currently being written.

Atty. Carol Ruiz-Austria of the University of the Philippines College of Law said human rights are inherent in all human beings. But human rights, per se, "do not come from law. We only use the law to claim and assert them." There are already laws protecting women’s rights, such as the Anti-sexual Harassment Law, Anti-trafficking Law, Anti-rape Law, and the Anti-violence against Women and Children Law. Their implementation, however, leaves much to be desired. The challenge is to provide enabling conditions for women to claim and exercise their rights.

Other presentors at the forum were Elizabeth Enriquez, moderator; Aurora Javate de Dios, former CEDAW Committee member; David Guerrero, advertising chair of the BBDO Guerrero Ortega; business analyst Peter Wallace; Myrna Yao, NCRFW chair and entrepreneur, and Evelyn Singson, first woman president of the Management Association of the Philippines.

CEDAW awareness-raising activities are scheduled with a "knowledge fair and exhibit" in September for the treaty’s silver anniversary. Contact (632) 5259721, or email: [email protected]

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TWO YEARS AGO, Bright Minds Read (BMR), a McDonald’s Charities and DepEd-NCR program was launched to promote reading and literacy among Filipino children in support of the Department’s goal of making every child a reader, and Republic Act 8525 Adopt-A-School Program.

It tackled the problem of reading deficiency by developing training manuals for public school teachers that provided strategies and know-how to successfully teach beginning reading to Grade I schoolers, and provided workbooks for Grade I pupils especially designed to enhance reading and comprehension skills.

Bright Minds Read was created to address a 2002-DepEd-NCR survey that showed that four out of 10 first graders were non-readers. They became either "students at risk" (STAR) of not qualifying for Grade II, or they fell behind for the duration of their schooling simply because they could not read well. That same year, a BMR pilot study was conducted on 4,200 Grade I pupils in 14 schools in the NCR region.

At the end of SY 2005, 68 percent of the Grade I pupils studied could read sentences and answer questions about what they read, while 89 percent improved their comprehension skills. By the next year, the students’ reading skills posted an astounding 81.52 percent mastery and a noticeable improvement in their confidence level and school behavior. As of SY2005, all the students in the pilot study became readers with comprehension skills. This means that BMR has achieved its target of zero-nonreaders for all 4,200 pupils.

Simultaneously, 907,213 students in 6,948 classes under the same BMR program have dramatically improved their level from nonreaders since 2002.

Those results were formally revealed at the Bright Minds Read fund-raising launch with the theme, "A Public-Private Partnership: Improving Beginning Reading for Filipino Grade I Pupils" held at Malacañang last week.

President Macapagal-Arroyo lauded the program initiated by McDonald’s local charity arm, McDonald’s Charities, and the DepEd-NCR headed by Dr. Teresita Domalanta, regional director.

The event gathered selected companies and organizations pledging their support for BMR. These were the League of Corporate Foundations, Inc. which committed to fund 800 BMR kits in the next two to three years; United Print Media Group, which will help communicate the BMR message through its member publications; Makati Princess Urduja-JCI (Jaycees) which will help tap local government units to support and adopt BMR; Petron Foundation, the first to adopt the BMR program in its beneficiary schools, and PNCC Skyway Corp., which has committed to provide space in its booths for BMS donation boxes.

Kenneth S. Yang, McDonald’s Charities president, welcomed the companies into the BMR program. "These partnerships will make a positive difference in the lives of our young beneficiaries," he said. "Their help will ensure that more Filipino children will learn to read towards a brighter future."

"The diminishing rate of nonreaders among our BMR beneficiaries is a testament to how effective Bright Minds Read really is," said Dr. Domalanta. She expressed the hope that with more companies, NGOs and LGUs supporting the program, "We’ll achieve zero nonreaders among Grade I students nationwide."

Upon adoption of the BMR program, a beneficiary school receives BMR kits costing P11,200 each. A kit contains 32 illustrated English and Filipino books integrating Filipino values, 200 worksheets for the big books, and teachers’ lesson plans. Under the program, teachers, supervisors and principals are required to undergo training for the proper implementation of the instructional materials.

Among the 14 divisions in the NCR, all the 527 classrooms in Caloocan City are now using the BMR materials with funding from the city government. In addition to the 70 pilot classes in the NCR, public schools in Baguio, Cebu, Iloilo, Dumaguete, Lipa City, and Kidapawan City and General Santos City in Cotabato have now adopted the BMR technology.

McDonald’s Charities is taking the program to all public schools nationwide by 2008.

Zonito Torrevillas, McDonald’s corporate communication director, says mayors can help put BMR into action in their localities. Contact her at 0917-8208123.

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