UNION Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) and its thrift subsidiary, City Savings Bank (CitySavings), are pitching their support to a program that pursues to build the capability of educators to teach online.
UnionBank, through its Xcellerator Program, and CitySavings donated P660,000 and P330,000, respectively, for the Help Educators Rise to Online Education (Heroes) 2021 project of Thames International School.
A pioneer in online education since 2018, Thames is now sharing its expertise via Heroes 2021—an intensive nationwide program that aims to train over 800,000 Department of Education (DepEd) teachers on effective online teaching. Thames is embarking on this endeavor together with its learning partners Edurescue (Philippines) and Akadasia (Singapore).
With the shift to digital and contactless models, educational institutions need to propel the skills of educators to provide effective digital learning due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Through its corporate social responsibility program, UnionBank will support the education drive, which aligns with its PeopleTech initiative to build the skills and capabilities of the future.
City Savings Bank, on the other hand, continues to strengthen its partnership engagement with DepEd by supporting its Learning Continuity Plan (LCP). The LCP aims to ensure students’ learning progresses in this new normal outside the classroom walls.
Heroes 2021
Under Heroes 2021, the DepEd teachers will be given access to learning programs on emerging technologies, to keep up with the changing education landscape.
“We thank our partners Thames, UnionBank and CitySavings for the Heroes 2021 teacher training project. We all know that the use of printed modules for learning delivery is not sustainable in the long run given the costs and impact on the environment. Online learning is one of the solutions and now is the time to train our teachers. We are excited that since the launch, we already have more than 11,000 DepEd National Capital Region (NCR) teachers trained,” said DepEd NCR Director Malcolm Garma.
According to Joel Santos, president and co-founder of Thames International Business School, the biggest challenge to digital transformation in any organization is the change in mindset.
“We now have Gen Z learners, but education delivery has remained the same,” he said, highlighting the need to pivot to online education.
“Online learning is like learning how to swim— we’re helping teachers how to float. But we need to fast-track everything,” Santos added.
He called on other members of the private sector to join Thames, UnionBank and CitySavings in ensuring that no school and no teacher will be left behind during these very challenging times. (PR)