DAVAO City recently entered a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Israel on the Excellence in Education: A Lighthouse Project.

The MOA, which was signed by Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio with PassItForward Chairman Shmuel Weiss, Israel Ambassador to the Philippines Effie Ben Matityau, and Department of Education Davao regional director lawyer Alberto Escobarte, seeks to improve the delivery of quality education to Davao learners by providing capacity building activities or trainings for the teachers on the Innovation, Science and technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (i-Steam) curriculum.

The program holds a lot of promise especially for the development of our local teachers.

With rapid changes around different fields, our teachers cannot always stick with the old ways. New changes demand new ways of teaching for our students. This will help them be more competitive once they go up the education ladder.

We hope that the program will truly benefit our local teachers in the future to be able to produce knowledgeable and competitive Dabawenyo students.

The partnership with a foreign nation does not show weakness on our part but rather, it shows that we are open enough to try new ways that will advance our education sector. Israel is a pretty advanced nation and might have some teaching techniques that can be applied to the students here.

By strengthening the educational foundation of our students, we can hope for a better future for our nation.