DEPED’S ABOT-ALAM
The author is Teacher
JUDITH H. PINEDA
The mission of the Department of Education is “to protect and promote the right of every Filipino to quality, equitable, culture-based and complete basic education.” One of the DepEd’s major vehicles in carrying out this mission is the K-to-12 program.
Even as the DepEd goes full gear in the implementation of this major reform initiative, it is also mindful of the fact that not all young learners have ready or easy access to school. In far-flung communities, young learners have to walk long distances or wade or even swim through rivers just to be able to get to school. This is very taxing on their young bodies and many of them ultimately lose interest in getting an education.
To address the needs of these hard-to-reach learners and to provide them easier access to education and other opportunities, the DepEd, in partnership with government and nongovernment groups, has embarked on “Programs for Last Mile Learners.” One of these is “Abot-Alam” (loosely translated as “Knowledge Within Reach”), a program for out-of-school youth (OSY). Various sources of data put the number of Filipino out-of school youth aged 15-30 at anywhere between 3 million and 4 million.
Abot-Alam is a convergence program involving national government agencies under the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster of the Cabinet. Through the collective effort of these agencies, in partnership with local government units, civil society organizations, the private sector and community-based groups, Abot-Alam is aimed at mapping out-of-school youth and matching them with appropriate government, private-sector, or civil-society programs that will give them opportunities for education, employment and entrepreneurship.
Abot-Alam is being implemented by multi-sectoral alliances on the municipality, city and provincial levels. For this nationwide implementation, the local alliances are led by the LGUs with support from the local DepEd offices, the National Youth Commission, other government agencies in the area, and civil-society organizations.
The direct and sustained participation of each citizen, who will adopt as his/her personal mission the task of ensuring that at least one out-of-school youth in his/ her workplace or neighborhood gets access to the opportunities being provided by AbotAlam.
Success can be achieved if we, together as a nation, give it one big push.
— oOo—
I at Dila-Dila Elementary School, Sta. Rita, Pampanga