IN THE town of Sitio Lower Sabangan in Manolo Fortich, the only school facility that stood in the neighborhood was a small one-room day care center. While the center is able to provide basic education to its young students, both space and the limited resources can only cater to a few number of learners.
With the unpredictable weather in Bukidnon nowadays, purok leader Judith Amoncio also worries that heavy rainfall would affect the classes. “Because the day care is mainly made out of bamboo, rain water enters the room when the wind is strong so classes may get cancelled.”
A few meters from the old day care center, however, now stands a fully furnished container van to serve as Sitio Sabangan’s new day care center. The repurposed facility turned over by Hedcor came with tables and chairs, as well as books and other learning materials. A comfort room and washing area are also provided by the container van-turned-day care center.
During the turnover of the P700,000-school facility, Manolo Fortich Mayor Clive Quiño expressed his gratitude to Hedcor for the project.
“It has been the municipality’s and Hedcor’s goal that as much as possible we bring to the communities their very basic needs, one of which is education,” shared Quiño who regarded Hedcor as their ‘partners for progress.’
“My heartfelt thanks goes to Hedcor, as always. They really stand by their promise of Advancing Business and Communities,” he added.
From a population of 19 students from Lower Sabangan, the day care center will now house almost twice its number of learners as the facility will cater students from Upper Sabangan as well.
The container van was once used by Hedcor to haul plant facilities such as turbines during the construction of its 73.3-megawatts (MW) Manolo Fortich Hydros in Bukidnon.
Hedcor is a run-of-river hydropower arm of AboitizPower. It currently operates 22 hydropower facilities with a total installed capacity of 277MW of clean and renewable energy. (PR)