smart brings school-in-a-Bag to Benguet
As the sun was setting on the mountains of Benguet province, the first few climbers from a group of 41 employees from PLDT and Smart Communications started the assault. The steep final leg of the six-hour trek would end in Sitio Lanipew in the remote and off-grid mountaintop municipality of Kibungan.
The climbers struggled through the difficult ascent, made more challenging by the occasional rain showers and the disappearing light, all the while mindful of the items they were lugging on their backs — assorted gadgets that would bring digital learning to the students of Lanipew Barrio School.
Waiting for them at the school were students, teachers, parents, and other members of the community, who would receive the Smart School-in-a-Bag, do- nated by the PLDT Employees Credit Cooperative, Inc. (PECCI) with the support of the PLDT Mountaineering and Outdoors Club, Inc. (PLDT MOCI) and the Smart Mountaineers Club (SMC).
The oversize bag contains a laptop preloaded with K-12 content, mobile phone, LED TV, solar panels, Smart Bro Pocket Wi-Fi units, and five tablets loaded with a literacy app and the Maging Laging Handa series of disaster preparedness videos.
Teacher Estela T. Bangleg, one of only two teachers in Sitio Lanipew, recognizes the important role technology plays in education. “We find ways to expose them to technology. I download nursery rhymes whenever I am in La Trinidad, so that my kindergarten students can watch them on my cell phone. The videos and the colors excite them,” says Bangleg.
The School-in-a-Bag donation comes with teacher training and monitoring.
Since last year, Smart has distributed 36 School-in-a-Bag units to different schools, 20 of which were sponsored by individuals and organizations like PECCI. Each bag costs P100,000.
Those who are interested to donate Smart’s School-in-a-Bag units may email TechnoCart@smart.com.ph.