How CHP Cebu Supports Senior High School

The K-12 program in the Philippines is on a roll. Not only does it guarantee universal kindergarten training, but it also means two more extra years in high school, which will be referred to as senior high.

 

The program comes with advantages. One, it now makes us at par with most nations, at least in terms of the number of years in school. Students who’d like to enroll in college overseas won’t have to spend a few more years in high school.

 

Further, completing the tracks provides high school students the tools needed to truly succeed in college, as well as the knowledge and expertise to land them a job in case they don’t want to pursue college anymore.

 

Despite these, senior high school presents challenges to both students and parents:

  • Can poor parents still afford to send their children to school for two more years? In poorer communities, parents usually encourage their kids to find employment once they’ve completed high school.
  • Are there enough schools to accommodate senior high school students?
  • Are the schools nearby offer tracks that the students are interested in?

 

CHP Cebu Promotes Senior High

Senior high school presents a tough learning curve for all relevant parties. It’s new, it’s not completely understood, and it’s costly. Nevertheless, parents, students, and educational institutions can find a good partner in Center for Healthcare Professions Cebu.
CHP Cebu has been providing technical vocational courses around Cebu and the nearby Visayas region for decades—a proof of its credibility, good reputation, and quality education and training.
The training center provides more than 20 different types of tech-voc training, some of which are accredited by TESDA for both learning implementation and assessment.

 

With senior high school, CHP Cebu offers all of its courses to students who wish to explore the fields of healthcare, foreign languages, housekeeping, and wellness. The center is also adding more very soon such as baking and pastry and hairdressing.

 

Not only that, CHP Cebu:

 

  • Provides reasonably priced courses and accepts government vouchers worth 20,000 pesos to bring the costs down further. Students now have a much higher chance to complete their high school education.
  • Gives high-quality training pursuant to the established rules and regulations of the industry, as well as according to the demands and learning needs globally. Senior high school students who wish to work after can now receive certifications that can give them more job opportunities whether here in the Philippines or abroad.
  • Helps senior high school students choose the best track for themselves. This can prevent a possible job mismatch.
  • Brings the training to the students. Some of the poorest or underserved communities are those of the indigenous peoples and families living in rural or remote areas. These individuals normally don’t have easy access to a school, which prevents them from getting the education they need. To resolve this problem, CHP Cebu partners with different government agencies and schools so we can deliver mobile training to them.

 

For more information about our senior high program, please contact us here.

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Disaster Preparedness and Management: How CHP Cebu Can Help in the Effort

Philippines, sadly, is one of the most disaster-prone areas in the world for a variety of reasons:

  • We are found within the Pacific Ring of Fire, which means we are already vulnerable in two things: earthquakes and volcano eruptions. One of the most significant, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, was so catastrophic it changed climate temperature.
  • Many of the towns are found in low-lying areas. As climate change and global warming increase the level of water, these areas are threatened by floods and even disappearance.
  • A lot of the Filipinos are poor. In the first six months of 2012, about 28 percent were already in the poverty line with many earning only 16,000 pesos a year or less than 2,000 pesos a month.

But one of the biggest reasons is our lack of disaster preparation and management.

The truth about natural disasters is this: nothing can stop them from happening. No one can change weather patterns in the Pacific Ocean or stop the movements of the tectonic plates. However, the impact of these disasters can be mitigated if there’s only careful and advanced planning and training.

To promote this line of thinking, the Philippines has enacted Republic Act 10121 otherwise known as Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Act of 2010.

One of its provisions is to require local government units (LGUs) to allocate 5 percent of its expected revenues from regular sources as a calamity or disaster fund. The amount is then divided into two: 70 percent is for equipment, preparedness, response, recovery, and rehabilitation while 30 percent is for quick response (or standby fund).

A 5 percent allocation sounds small, but considering that cities may earn in billions or hundreds of millions, it means that a calamity fund may be worth millions as well. Nevertheless, money is still a finite resource, which should be used wisely.

Here’s How CHP Cebu Can Help

The Center for Healthcare Professions (CHP) Cebu can be a strategic partner for these LGUs in disaster preparedness and management by doing what we do best, and that is to train people. CHP offers a variety of courses that can be extremely helpful in times of natural disasters such as:

By taking these courses from CHP Cebu, LGUs can now:

  • Augment their number of volunteers and personnel, who have the competency and skill to help save lives in times of disasters
  • Tap their own local manpower to save costs and speed up disaster response and recovery
  • Make more people proactive when it comes to disaster preparedness
  • Use these professionals to disseminate more information about how to prepare in times of disaster
  • Have more health care professionals ready especially since natural disasters can also increase the risk of injury and disease

LGUs and CHP Cebu can also work together to identify people who are more ideal to be trained for a specific course. This person may then be further taught to provide at least basic training to the rest of the members of the community.

When it comes to disaster preparedness and management, it’s a team effort. We at CHP Cebu would like to be part of that team.

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CHP Cebu’s Role to Reduce In-work Poverty in the Country

Poverty remains to be one of the biggest challenges in the Philippines, and it comes in various forms, including in-work poverty.

 

What Is In-work Poverty?

For many of us, we grow up being told that one of the ways to get out of poverty and live a more comfortable life is to get a job. However, a recent study by the World Bank concludes that even Filipino workers are still poor.

Why is this happening? At first glance, we can blame it on underemployment, a situation wherein a person is hired for shorter number of hours, which means take-home pay for daily wage workers is small.

Further:

  • Many Filipino workers are paid less than the minimum daily wage.
  • The increase in wages doesn’t offset the increase in inflation, which drives prices of commodities up.
  • The Philippines has been marketed as a source of cheap labor.

Digging deeper, though, we find the root cause: poverty.

When a person is poor, the chances of sustaining one’s good education are very low. In fact, it’s still common among students, particularly in rural areas that are the poorest in the country, to finish high school and then find work after. Worse, if finances are really tight, they don’t complete even their elementary education.

Students who tend to be deprived of a good education are more likely to have a poor set of skills. Thus, they are less competitive, less attractive in the job market, and more possible to get any kind of job as long as there’s salary to expect.

This also implies that the job opportunities available are limited, and there’s hardly any room for professional improvement or growth. Lastly, they are working on non-secured jobs.

 

What CHP Cebu Has Been Doing

The Center for Healthcare Professions Cebu definitely understands this sentiment. Hence, we’ve been working real hard to reduce the occurrence and consequence of in-work poverty.

We:

  • Provide affordable technical vocational courses that are both in demand and are quick to complete. Students therefore have a higher chance of landing a good job as soon as they graduate.
  • Help implement the mobile training program, which brings the facilities and instructors to areas that are not yet reached by a state university or college.
  • Work closely with government agencies such as Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) in offering courses that help students become one step closer to getting a professional license or certification.
  • Conduct pre-enrollment assessment to ensure that the student’s selected course matches the person’s knowledge, skills, and preferred career path.
  • Support government scholarship programs.

Our main goal at CHP Cebu is not only to have as many students educated but also to ensure we give quality education that tests their competence and expertise. This way, by the time they’ve completed their course, they become valuable workers whether here in the Philippines or overseas.

In a perfect world, poverty doesn’t exist, and everyone has the best quality of life. We are not in a perfect world, but we can help change it for the better. You can make your life better.

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CHP Cebu and Its Mobile Training Course That Changed the Atis’ Lives

The year 2015 is definitely one for the books for the Ati community living in Naga City in Cebu: about 25 of them graduated from one of the technical vocational courses offered by the collaboration of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Center for Healthcare Professions Cebu.

The group of Ati in Cebu is small, composed of less than 50 families. However, they have been regarded to be an impoverished lot—a truth that its chief Lilia Sanger, then 59, shared when interviewed by Sunstar almost a year ago.

The shanties, location near a coal site, and the regular teasing—and sometimes bullying—the children receive in school are further testaments of the struggles they live every day.

Living in poverty is extremely challenging, particularly in the Philippines, where the access of education, though a right, at times feels like a privilege.

While there are state universities, they are few in the province. Further, even though they are subsidized by the government, students have to pay for other fees. A poor family may not be able to afford them.

While poor students may take advantage of scholarships, they are not provided to everyone, and many of them do not cover these miscellaneous expenses.

This setup usually forces these students to do one thing: try their best to finish high school so they can at least get a job once they are done. This means they wait until they have enough money to finish college or forget it altogether.

So it is with the many members of the Ati community whose students often go to school walking while starving.

 

Then Hope Came Along

The chance to participate in a Housekeeping Service training provided by the Center for Healthcare Professionals Cebu was the beacon of hope these students had been hoping for.

Bernard Restificar, president and chief executive officer of CHP Cebu had long dreamed of implementing the school’s mobile training programs to bring them to the doorsteps of the Philippine community.

The course, which was provided for free for the Ati as well as for the Badjao communities, ran for almost 450 hours, but this amount of time was more than enough to give them what they thought was impossible: a completed course, the closest thing to having a college degree.

The class provided them an opportunity to get a head start in tourism working in different businesses such as hotels, not to mention on-the-job trainings, which they could include in their application once they are ready to be employed.

Because the course already included a mandatory assessment, employers are now assured that these graduates have the competency and skill to join their workforce.

Getting oneself out of poverty is difficult, and sadly, it is even more so for the indigenous peoples like the Ati who are incredibly underrepresented in the working community. The students and now graduates still have a tough road to deal with.

However, the ultimate ticket to success is a combination of knowledge and commitment to achieve one’s goals. Now that they have the knowledge, they just need to push themselves a bit further each time. Before they know it, they are an inch closer to their primary dream—or, in fact, they can already reach it.

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