Thursday, July 07, 2005
At least 406 students find hope in GMA’s name
Amid calls for President Arroyo to step down, 17-year-old Rosemarie Cabanay is grateful to the President for giving her another chance to go back to school.
Cabanay is one of 406 “PGMA scholars” under the Department of Social Welfare and Development for 2004-2005.
The high school student gained second-place honors in her junior year, despite a lack of involvement in her school’s extra-curricular activities.
Cabanay belongs to the Ata Tribe in Sitio Canlimokon, Barangay Sab-ahan, Bais City in Negros Oriental.
A scholarship program for out-of-school youths under the Kalahi Rural Areas, one of the projects DSWD has been running since 2003, aims to decrease delinquency to 10 percent in selected areas.
The areas selected for the project have high delinquency and insurgency rates, reportedly because of the lack of government and community activities.
In Cebu City, there are 48 college students enrolled in the Cebu State College in Science and Technology under the PGMA scholarship program.
Bohol, which has the highest number of PGMA scholars, has about 343 students in Dagohoy and Danao towns.
Bohol also has the highest insurgency rate and a large number of school dropouts.
What beneficiaries get
The scholarship program is good for four years, until the students graduate from either high school or college, said DSWD manpower development assistant May Silva.
Tuition will be shouldered by DSWD, as well as an allowance of P700 per month for high school and P1,000 per month for college students.
Since the program started in 2003, there were some students who could not take the pressures of school and decided to drop out. Some worked instead to help their parents, said Silva.
Others also decided that school was not for them and dropped out to get married.
The PGMA scholarship program is conducted in coordination with government schools and local government units (LGU).
Applicants undergo screening by the LGU, before they are referred to the schools for entrance exams.
Once they pass, they would have to sign a contract and agree to maintain an average grade of 80 for high school students and 2.5 for college students.
Regular monitoring sessions are conducted by DSWD with the students, their parents and school administrators.
“We meet with the students at least once a month if they do not have any issues as regards the school or their parents. We also conduct personality development trainings for the students,” Silva said. (LLV)
(July 7, 2005 issue)
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