It has been the result of the combined efforts of the founder of the street children village, Fr. Marciano Evangelista, and the pioneer of the squatters resettlement community, Fr. Salvador Pablo. The mobile van can hold up to a maximum of 25 students. Classes will run from Mondays to Fridays for four hours a day.
Initial courses to be offered are Consumer Electronics and Motorcycle Repair. The first will teach skills for troubleshooting and repair of electrical appliances such as electric fans, TV, electrical outlets, circuits and wiring, and cell phone repair. Graduates will receive a TESDA-accredited National Certificate 2 (NC-2).
The second course has practical use for a community that uses tricycles as a common mode of transportation. The course will be given by a resource person from a motorcycle company.
Mr John Kerr, a Scottish lay volunteer in the street children village and board member of Tuloy Foundation, conceived the idea as a response to the growing number of students who drop out despite free education in public schools. The most common reason cited was the lack of money for transportation and the need to work. Thus, Tuloy Foundation is now venturing out and seeking the youth-in-need where they are, in order to equip them with practical skills and values to empower them for work.
“Still, there are more children out there,” Fr Evangelista said. “We have to do something to reach out to the children who cannot be accommodated within the walls of the Street Children Village.” He added: “We Salesians will have to adapt to the needs of the poor youth with a quick reading of the signs of the times. It is not the youth that have to adapt to the Salesians and their works.”
The area where the van will go is in the diocese of San Pablo – a suffragan see of the archdiocese of Manila – entrusted to the Salesian Bishop Leo Drona. It is the seventh Salesian community in the diocese where they are concentrating their efforts for the education and rehabilitation of young people.
Published 21/07/2011
