Encouraging young scavengers to dream

Marjorie Gorospe INQUIRER.net ALTERNATIVE education is the flagship program of Educational Research and Development Assistance (ERDA) Foundation, Inc. It is a response to the growing number of out-of-school youth in the country. Fr. Pierre Tritz, founder of ERDA Foundation, saw the need to take action on the need to get these young people back to school. Thus he gave up his foreign nationality and acquired Filipino citizenship to continue his mission in the country. ERDA has started various programs for these young people, including those found scavenging, wondering the streets and indigenous children who disregarded by society. Seeing that the key to a better future is education, hence, ERDA put up the Tuklas, Kalinga, Laruan, Aralan at Sanayan (TuKLASan) Center for street children in San Juan, Metro Manila and the Sanayan ng mga Batang Nanambakan (SaBaNa) Center for young scavengers in Tondo, Manila. “We’re glad that the children whom we have granted alternative education do not go back to scavenging anymore,” says Eugenia Celario, program officer of ERDA Sabana. “The toxics they have to [be exposed to] in the smoky mountain are dangerous to their health,” Celario adds. As of the moment, the foundation has targeted more than 500 children for its SaBaNa program in Tondo. Their program has produced 258 elementary students, 147 high school students and 11 college students distributed among the three barangays in Tondo. Celario says SaBaNa provides non-formal education using a module approved by the Department of Education. These students are then required to take an examination and if they pass, they can continue studying without getting embarrassed about their age. “When [young scavengers] are provided alternative education, most likely, they will not go back to scavenging and they can see that their dreams are not too far from them to reach,” Celario says.