Empowering the community thru day-care centers

IN A DISTANT town in Laguna, the day-care center is a cramped portion of the village hall half the size of a regular room.

Every day, the day-care worker has to bring home her teaching tools on a wagon, since leaving them at the village hall will eat up space of the government office.

In other towns, the day-care centers either have no water supply or no toilets at all. Others are situated at the back of an elementary school separated only by a wall or near a health center, putting children at risk of catching illnesses.

Facilities, which should be conducive to learning, are only among the concerns of the Day Care Resource Center (DCRC) based in the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB) in Laguna.

“The DCRC is mandated to provide a support system and capacity building to barangay (village) day-care workers. It helps groom the potentials of day-care workers and the children to help out in the community,” said Dean Sue Liza Saguiguit of the UPLB’s College of Human Ecology (CHE).

Training

In Laguna, there are 730 day-care centers, with 700 workers.

Around 30 pupils are attending each class, which is usually held twice in a day.

There are at present 49,000 day-care centers in the country.

The CHE, in collaboration with the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office (PSWDO), formed the DCRC in 2000 as the first and only day-care resource center in the country.

The DCRC has formulated training programs on basic day-care administration and operations and on early childhood care and development for the day-care workers.

Empowering

“Your client is not only the child, but the whole community. The child is a member of the family and the family is a member of the community,” Saguiguit would tell the day-care workers.

However, she observed that “not everybody has a background in education or social development. There are some who took up commerce or even computer (courses).”

She said day-care workers are usually appointed by the village chiefs.

“The DCRC saw the need of leveling these basic skills (of the workers),” Saguiguit said.

“Before, I easily lost my temper when the children did not behave well. But (after the training) I realized that in handling children, you have to treat them gently and warmly,” said Corazon Bancifra, 41, who has been a day-care worker in Liliw town for 18 years now.

“They have to realize that being a day-care worker doesn’t only mean looking after the children. The workers have a big responsibility over the child’s values he would be growing up with. In the absence of the parents, the day-care workers are the role models,” said Saguiguit.

The trainings, she said, are aimed at empowering and boosting the day-care workers’ confidence in handling those tasks.

According to the PSWDO, day-care centers, especially in big towns, receive hefty support from the municipal government.

The workers are paid around P6,000 to P8,000 a month.

However, those in remote areas, the day-care centers classified as “parent-augmented” survive only through contributions of an average of P50 to P100 from each student.

The provincial government provides a subsidy of P1,000 to raise the workers’ salaries.

“These are also among the topics being discussed—how could they seek support from their LGUs (local government units). Imagine, these workers do not only teach but they are also on call during calamities,” said Saguiguit.

Professionalizing

Quoting an earlier report from the education department, Laguna Board Member Neil Nocon said 40 percent of Filipino students lack skills in Math and English.

“I’m sure the numbers are higher. Perhaps this is because we have become more focused on the high school and college levels, we forget that intervention also has to be done at the formative years,” he said.

The DCRC is proposing to the national government a replication of the project in other provinces, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao.

In 2009, Batangas City was the first LGU outside Laguna to have its day-care workers train with the DCRC.

Saguiguit said the project is moving toward improving the quality of education at the barangay level that would make day-care centers at par with private preschools, which poor families cannot afford.

“What is being developed (at the day-care centers) is the love for learning. Who knows? Our future leaders might be among these students,” she added. –Maricar Cinco, Philippine Daily Inquirer