The GILAS project

The little school in a little fishing village that could

The island of Olango is just a few kilometers east from Mactan, and its mangrove forest, sea grass meadows, coral reefs and sand flats have made it a common stop not only for migrating shorebirds headed north to breed, but for birdwatching tourists as well. People from all over the world visit the island not only to birdwatch but to do research, video documentation, or skin and scuba dive.

But this coming school year, it will be the other way around as the students of the Sta. Rosa public high school—and 17 other public high schools in Lapu-Lapu City—through the multi-sectoral initiative called GILAS, will finally be connected to the Internet and to the world.

GILAS, which in English roughly translates into "shrewdness," stands for "Gearing Up Internet Literarcy Access for Students," and it aims to provide internet access and an understanding of the computer’s basic programs for students in all the 5,433 public secondary schools in the Philippines.

With less than 40 percent of the country’s public high schools equipped with Internet laboratories and with only four percent with an internet connection, GILAS is a project long overdue. The consortium of private companies and civic groups behind GILAS are composed of Globe Telecom, Innove Communications and Intel.

Woodrow Denuyo, principal of the Sta. Rosa public high school, thought the same thing two years ago, when he was first installed as the school’s top administrator.

"I was assigned principal two years ago, and my first project was to connect," Denuyo explains. "I was lucky that I was a scholar for information technology. Since we are now in the information age and for our graduates to be real competitive, we had to equip them with the information and the technology need."

But good intentions and good plans don’t necessarily translate quickly to real life, and the realization of Denuyo’s dream involved a lot of help.

"I approached alumni and asked for a P150,000 and said I will give them 10 computers," he says. "I was able to provide the 10 computers. Another alumnus hooked up the telephone lines. We were the first school here in Olango to have 10 computers and a telephone line."

It was only sometime in August of last year that the high school finally came under the auspices of the GILAS project, but this was a very welcome development on the part of Denuyo.

"I was very happy with project GILAS," he explains, "because my vision and the vision of the community was joined together."

And GILAS, through the various members behind it, provide a lot.

The Department of Education Division on Public High Schools provides the tables, chairs and air conditioned rooms that can accomodate the computers, as well as shouldering the cost of the telephone lines and the Internet service provider as well as identifying techers who will participate in the information technology training.

The local government units are also tasked with encouraging local companies to adopt schools in their area of operation, as well as setting up community based resource mobilization campaigns.

Globe Telecom and Innove Communications will be providing a landline, Internet access and one IP address free of charge for one year.

The project also relies heavily upon earlier efforts of civic groups such as ConnectEd.ph, a consortium of private companies led by the Makati Business Club; and the Ayala Foundation Inc.

Between the two of them ConnectEd.ph and the Ayala Foundation have managed to connect 250 schools to the internet in of two years.

Another critical partner is USAID, which has been a very involved technical and financial partner of private sector educational initiatives.

The package was certainly impressive, but the students, however, were not as enthusiastic about the new technology as Denuyo was.

"Here in Olango we only cater to low income families, because we are mainly a fishing village," he says. "In the beginning the attitude was slow, they did not feel the need since the Internet and chatting weren’t that common here three years ago."

"But nowadays with the Internet chatting and everything, they now feel the need," he says happily. "Sabi nila: Sayang yung last year because they weren’t very serious. Initially, we offered it to those who would like to use the computers after class hours. Very few attended, very few made use of the computers."

HOPE SPRINGS

But this influx of technology doesn’t come out without its responsibilities, and the Sta. Rosa public high school was picked certainly not out of pity. The GILAS project coordinators do not randomly pick school with which to benefit with Internet connectivity.

Schools are selected after taking into consideration factors such as the existence of laboratory infrastructure and security, computer capacity, electricity, phone connection availability, the local community’s plans for the project’s sustainability and the participation of its local political executives, and the potential of the beneficiary schools to be able to mentor neighboring schools in replicating the GILAS project.

Although GILAS will be monitoring the connected schools—in fact, incentive programs are being mulled over to ensure that Internet use in the schools is optimized—it is still ultimately up to the schools on whether the project will be an enduring success.

For his part, Denuyo has already laid out his future plans to the diffrent members of the community.

"One of the plans for the computer center is the opening of the training center," he says. "Basically we want to offer the basic training—basic office applications—to the first year. We are arranging it in such a way that the computers will be maximized, kasi sayang, nandito na di pa gagamitin."

"The evenings will be for the Internet cafe and the training center," he continues. "What we are planning for the students is that the curriculum will be on technology and livelihood education. Since we are now in the information age, computer literacy is a basic requirement for them to apply for work, so we should be giving them this requirement so they will be competitive also."

Denuyo even has plans once the schools Internet connection has been upgraded to broadband. During this interview, Denuyo, along with the school’s computer teacher, were preparing to take up lessons at an online Cisco academy.

"We will also be offering the Cisco academy training," he says. "Cisco is offering online lessons and once we graduate and get our certificates we can now teach and that is online. The curriculum is from the States, and once we’re done with that the school can become a local academy."

Denuyo firmly believes that this project only has good things in store for the members of the community.

"Many of our children can’t go to college, many of them can’t go at once to look for a job because they are 16-17 years old," he explains. "For example, this year our graduates are only 269, and based on our statistics, 20-30 of them are 17 years old and above. Out of these 269, more or less 60 will go to college, 20 might go to work, while the rest are still here, because they can not really go to work."

"That is why we really need to open the training center, and we have made it in such a way that they will be the first clients," he says. "We’ll be preparing them, so by 18 years old they can go to college, they will be competitive because they are ready, and they will be having more confidence because they are equipped with the proper information."

Already a change can be seen, as evidenced by the computer laboratory’s new building right beside the school’s old and decrepit facilities. Hopefully, the GILAS beneficiaries will be as shrewd and as savvy as the project that is their namesake.