Even before the pandemic, far-flung schools have always seen the difficulties of giving the best of education to children who lived in remote and rural areas, more so those that are easily reached by modern advancements.
This has been the advocacy of PLDT-Smart Foundation (PSF), ensuring that there is no learner left behind, in the quest of achieving their dreams so they can be their very best in the future. And to support this advocacy, FiberHome, a long-time partner of PLDT, joined hands and pledged support to reach last mile schools starting with the School-in-a-Bag turnover. PSF received 17 Smart School-in-a-Bag donations from FiberHome. These donations will help support the Department of Education (DepEd)’s Last Mile School’s Program.
“We in PLDT and Smart believe that learning should never stop. This is why we have been advocating inclusive education. Students and teachers, alike, are finding more creative and innovative ways in adapting to the new normal of teaching and learning. We are inspired by the efforts of the education sector in ensuring that there is no learner left behind,” said PLDT SVP and Group Head for Home Consumer Business Butch Jimenez.
The School-in-a-Bag is designed to provide access to technology, connectivity, content, and a disaster-resilient pedagogy even for schools in remote areas. Each of the water-resistant backpack carries a laptop and pocket WiFi for teachers and 10 tablets for the students, all pre-loaded with interactive, multimedia content accessible even in offline use.
Since its launch in 2016, around 300 bags have been deployed, benefiting over 83,000 students and more than 4,000 teachers in last-mile communities.
PSF President Esther Santos expressed her gratitude to FiberHome for their generous support. “We value education as one of our core advocacy pillars in PLDT and Smart. We are thankful for partners like FiberHome who share our vision in ensuring that no learner is left behind amid the pandemic. These 17 School-in-a-bag donations will truly go a long way and will reach far-flung communities that are most in need,” Santos said.
PSF and FiberHome started their partnership in 2020 when they joined hands in helping victims of natural disasters, particularly the typhoon victims, in the country. The School-in-a-Bag turnover donation is the biggest partnership between PSF and FiberHome for 2021.
“FiberHome is grateful to have this opportunity to have this collaboration with PLDT-Smart Foundation. We share the same values of extending help to the community by supporting the School-in-a-Bag program with PLDT-Smart Foundation,” said FiberHome CSO Kira Wang.
FiberHome is one of PLDT’s long-time partners in delivering excellent customer service. It is an information and communication network products and solutions provider. FiberHome is committed to the progress and development of global information and communications across the world.
“Sharing the same values with PLDT-Smart Foundation to be of help to the community, FiberHome also desires to elevate the standards of education, information and communication technology by envisioning to provide access to education for all of our learners in the Philippines especially those from geographically isolated disadvantaged areas,” said FiberHome CEO Johnny Jiang.
“More than the devices, we are actually equipping the packages with learning contents and disaster- and pandemic-resilient strategy of teaching called CVIF-Dynamic Learning Program. School-in-a-Bag has become instrumental in helping us advocate for adoption of other schools of this DepEd-endorsed pedagogy,” Smart Community Relations AVP and Head Steph Orlino said.
The School-in-a-Bag program of Smart reinforces the PLDT group-wide commitment to the Untied Nations’ Sustainability Development Goal (SDG), particularly SDG#4 Quality Education.