A SCHOOL in Barcelona, Sorsogon won the Best Partnership Engagement Activity award given by the Department of Education Region 5.

The San Antonio Elementary School was recognized by the local DepEd for its program called “May hanapbuhay, Iwas COVID-19 pa”.

It aims to give an additional source of income to students’ parents amid the Covid19 pandemic.

Vilma Chavaria, head teacher at San Antonio Elementary School, said one of the capacity-building initiatives that they initiated is the soap-making project involving an initial of seven parents.

“With it, I connected with the local government unit of Barcelona, then they trained on soap making with the main ingredients of cosmos that were available within the streets of Barcelona,” Chavaria said.

“The LGU provided free training, equipment, and ingredients, which encouraged more parents to start making soap and eventually marketed their products,” she added.

Aside from soap making, Chavaria shared they introduced other skills training to the parents such as haircut and hair rebonding.

“From a P3,000 capital, the parents have now earned more than P10,000,” she said.

The selection of winners was based on the 2021 ‘Brigada Eskwela and Brigada Pagbasa’ initiative of the DepEd central office and implemented nationwide.

“Because of the impact of the pandemic for 2020, we generated P1.2 billion. Now we have P5 billion generated resources because of the Brigada Pagbasa program, our call for volunteers that started last June that we opened for all who are willing to support and continue the learning continuity plan,” said Ma. Cristina Baroso, Brigada Eskwela and Bridaga Pagbasa regional focal person.

Gilbert Sadsad, DepEd-5 regional director, said the Brigada Pagbasa will be a major program in terms of learning recovery plans.