For the Children
Dara Mae Tuazon leads the inspiring breed of unsung heroes that The One Philippines aims to discover
Dara Mae Tuazon talks about Bangketa Eskwela
The maiden search for an unsung hero by The One Philippines (TOP) in 2018 ended with college student Dara Mae Tuazon. The then 19-year-old has been teaching children in her neighbourhood in Malolos, Bulacan since she was 11, a passion she brought with her when she enrolled at the University of the East in Manila. On a break from her studies one day, she noticed three children singing for money at a food stall near her school and after finding out that they could neither read, write nor count she started teaching them during her free time. An anonymous post of Tuazon teaching a few children in a tricycle went viral on social media. Pretty soon, her “pupils” grew, street children from just around the school, pushing her to conduct daily classes. She used her allowance to photocopy activity sheets and in simple ways, raised funds to buy more learning materials and foods for the children. Volunteers showed up to help and UE loaned an area outside its walls as well as donated teaching equipment to their coed’s advocacy. The collaboration was dubbed Bangketa UEskwela.
Tuazon, however, was thinking beyond the walls of her alma mater. She registered the more generic Bangketa Eskwela as a foundation, securing the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in April 2018. The timing was perfect for Bangketa Eskwela Foundation (BEF) to be presented as a serious project before the panel of judges of the TOP search.
On May 2, 2018, at the TOP’s first benefit gala dinner, Tuazon was announced as the search’s first ever unsung hero. The title came with a handsome PhP1.5 million check for Tuazon’s projects, plus a couple more hundreds of thousands in cash and in kind donated to her cause spontaneously by the attendees after her name was announced.
Tuazon made good use of her prize money. From 2018 to 2019, she clocked 20 projects benefitting indigent children not only in Manila but as far as Pampanga to the north and Zamboanga to the south. She had to stop both projects and classes at the onset of Covid-19.
In the meantime, she focused on her licensure exam for a degree in grade school education and continued to plan for the time when BEF can conduct projects again. “I am working on creating BEF branches outside Metro Manila,” Tuazon tells Tatler. “I have enough volunteers who can conduct classes for the children who cannot, for some reason, go to formal school.”
The unsung hero who will follow in Tuazon’s footsteps is now the object of the 2022 TOP search. The vetting and the selection process will take a year, with the announcement of the winner and two runners-up in another benefit gala night next year. Again, cash prizes await all three to enable them to continue the good work they are doing.
TOP, a subsidiary of The One International founded in 2011 by David Harilela in Hong Kong, is chaired by Raffy Garcia III. It taps the vast network of Rotary International in the Philippines to comb the country far and wide in search of that unsung hero who works tirelessly for a disadvantaged sector of the community.
“I am working on creating BEF branches outside Metro Manila ... I have enough volunteers who can conduct classes for the children who cannot, for some reason, go to formal school” —DARA MAE TUAZON