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Monday, July 28, 2003
Editorial: Zero rust bloom
A metaphor for public education can be found, of all places, in an industrial work yard.
Napoleon Pe Jr. observes that, even on a very hot day, steel girders will sweat beads of moisture, proving that the metal retains water invisible to the eye. The president and chief operating officer of Metaphil Division points out that it only takes “rust bloom” disfiguring an equipment’s veneer to saddle a supplier with the ruinous cost of repair or replacement, following the current international practice of covering the painting job with a 15-year guarantee.
Pe says that the flaw can be traced to an improperly done procedure, for instance, in the sandblasting that is intended to flush out all traces of water or rust. For want of the right foundation, Pe notes, the whole expensive assemblage is rejected and scrapped.
Concern for another kind of bottomline is spurring the business sector to work with government in responding to basic services needing resources, expertise and mobilization. While still conventionally tapping the deep pockets of big business, corporate citizenship attempts to take charity a few steps beyond: by committing hearts and hands.
In the country, the government-private sector synergy is prominent in efforts for better public school connectivity. The “PCs for Public Schools” program is supported by connectEd-ph, a consortium of private companies and nongovernment organizations. A Cebuano partner is the Aboitiz Group Foundation Inc., which has so far donated 247 computer units to public high schools, refurbished computer labs and trained teachers and students.
But computer literacy is not by far the only pressing need in public high schools. More than the lack of classrooms and the deteriorating state of facilities, “increasing hopelessness” has broken out like a rust bloom among the youth. Last March, National Youth Commissioner for the Visayas Araceli Aves said that inadequate education was a top reason why youngsters were giving up and going under the swells of drug addiction, premarital sex and delinquency.
It is among youths at risk that the Kool Adventure Camp of Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (Rafi) seeks to make a difference. In their corporate camps, top executives undertake grueling physical challenges that range from climbing and leaping from a swaying 28-foot pole to scaling a wall while blindfolded and guided only by teammates. But how can the quivering human jelly that was once a cocksure, pampered CEO be helping disadvantaged youngsters?
Dominica Chua, Rafi chief operating officer, says that the P9,000 course fee of every corporate participant goes to subsidizing 85 percent of the cost of having the youth participate in the challenge- and adventure-based program. In the first Grand Homecoming last December, nearly 400 youth campers—public high school students, former street gang members, out-of-school youths, the hearing-impaired—reunited and proved that the camps did not just result in three-day bonding but also binding fellowships.
Roxane Joyce Carbo, 13, found out one balmy Friday morning exactly how the Kool Camp experience results in searing, personally lived reflections about belief in self, conquest of fear and faith in the team. The Florencio Urot National High School sophomore, whose camp name is “Hufflepuff,” was the first volunteer of Team Bayanihan, composed of her schoolmates and Pardo National High School students.
The plucky teener scrambled up the 28-foot pole, hesitating only near the summit. Although her harness was hooked up with three carabiners, connected to belaying ropes that ensured her safety, Hufflepuff carried out the rest of the challenge in slow motion: after mounting the pole, she turned around clockwise, crouched and sprung into empty space-nearly touching the goal, a suspended white rope, before her teammates gently lowered her to the ground.
After an emotional group hug, a still teary-eyed Hufflepuff confessed that, before the climb, she had been scared of heights. “But I learned after (my jump) that the fear was all in my mind.”
Fortunately for youths in danger of rust bloom and worse, more and more private institutions like Rafi are willing to take the challenge of helping public education where it all begins: in the mind. |
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