Ramshackle South Upi highland school needs help
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES NEWS • 09:45 AM Thu Jul 25, 2019
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By:
John M. Unson
MAGUINDANAO --- There is a makeshift school in Senamfledon area in Barangay Looy in South Upi town in this province that needs help.
Children there hold classes in a makeshift shelter, a virtual ramshackle, where Grades 1 to 4 pupils are cramped together during school days.
The school seemed more of an evacuation center for conflict-stricken children.
It was established on a land donated by an ethnic Teduray community leader sympathetic to impoverished peasant families in Senamfledon, located on a highland in Barangay Looy.
On Tuesday, personnel of the Army’s 6th Infantry Battalion, a unit of the 603rd Brigade under the 6th Infantry Division, extended humanitarian intervention for pupils of the Senamfledon public school.
The outreach mission, a joint initiative of civic groups, the 6th IB and local officials, was supported by entities of the United Nations involved in various projects in underdeveloped areas in Maguindanao.
Maguindanao is one of the five provinces of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, or BARMM.
The Bangsamoro region also covers Lanao del Sur and the scattered island provinces of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
Teduray grade school pupils received from facilitators of Tuesday's humanitarian mission school supplies and books needed for basic learning.
They were also feed with hot cereals prepared together by personnel of 6th IB and volunteers from non-government pro-poor organizations.
Senamfledon is in Barangay Looy and in most Visayan dialects the term looy that can also be spelled as luoy is generic for pitiful. (John Felix Unson)
Photos: Ethnic Teduray school children in very dire situation.