At the start of next year, selected elementary schools in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao would receive funding under a World Bank-assisted, civil society-led project aimed at improving primary education in previously war-torn areas in the southern Mindanao island.
"The training on sub-grants proposal making and financial management for school representatives is currently ongoing and school grants are expected to be disbursed in January 2025," the Washington-based multilateral lender said in a Dec. 24 implementation status and results report on the Japan Social Development Fund: No Bangsamoro Child Left Behind in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) project.
To recall, the World Bank in mid-2023 approved a $2.752-million investment project financing (IPF) grant to the Cotabato City-based Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society Inc. for the project to improve learning outcomes of re-enrolled out-of-school-children as well as retained at-risk children in pilot elementary schools in project-supported divisions in the two BARMM provinces.
The World Bank defines at-risk children as "those who are still in school but at risk of dropping out."
Based on earlier World Bank documents, this project covers a total of 100 schools or 25 each from four school divisions in Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, including those nearby three Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) camps.
During the three-year project implementation period ending in mid-2026, the project targets to benefit about 9,300 elementary pupils aged six to 11 belonging to around 5,250 households.
So far, $250,000-worth or 9.1 percent of the grant has been disbursed.
Following the World Bank's second implementation support mission last October, the project's progress was slightly downgraded to "moderately satisfactory" from "satisfactory" previously.
Also in January of next year, the lender is scheduled to approve a $4-million IPF loan for the BARMM government's Roads to Development project to be implemented by its Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform (MAFAR) under the World Bank-administered Bangsamoro Normalization Trust Fund (BNTF), the latest documents showed.
The Philippine national government's Department of Finance (DOF) shall borrow on behalf of the BARMM regional leadership for its forthcoming project aimed at improving rural road access in six MILF camp-communities in five Mindanao provinces, in order to connect farms to markets.