#MateshipAndBayanihan amid COVID-19: Working together to support Bangsamoro children’s education

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to strain nations across the world. Economies, jobs, education and health system remain disrupted. Vulnerable sectors, especially those in developing countries like the Philippines, are entrenched deeper in poverty. Earlier this year, it was reported that the Philippines has suffered its worst economic contraction since World War II with a Gross Domestic Product growth of negative 9.5% by end of 2020. The nation’s total outstanding debt also climbed 3.5% month-on-month to P10.77 trillion.

The dire situation has enabled strengthened alliances, as nations on the mend from the pandemic extend support to struggling nations. One friend that came to the immediate aid of the Philippines is its Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific neighbor, Australia.

Australia and the Philippines celebrate 75 years of diplomatic ties this year since the establishment of the Australian Consulate General in Manila. Through the decades, Australia has been a long-standing partner of the Philippines to address its development challenges in the areas of basic education, training and human resource development, public financial management, health, rural and community development, governance, assistance to vulnerable groups, infrastructure, and support to the Mindanao peace and development process.

Commitment to Development, Commitment to Mindanao

Based on latest data, the Bangsamoro is home to some of the country’s poorest and most vulnerable communities due to a confluence of man-made and natural disasters. The region continues to lag behind compared to others in the country despite the gains made under the new autonomous government. Poverty incidence among families, for instance, remain at 53.6%. Basic or simple literacy, meanwhile, stands at 86.1%, way below the country’s average of 96.5%.

Australia’s development cooperation program in the Philippines thus puts premium in Mindanao, particularly in the Bangsamoro: supporting basic education reform, peace and stability, and inclusive economic growth.

Some of the past initiatives include the Basic Education Assistance to Mindanao program from 2002-2009; the Philippines Response to Indigenous Peoples’ and Muslim Education program (PRIME) in 2011-2014; and the Basic Education Assistance to Muslim Mindanao program (BEAM-ARMM) in 2012-2017.

Partnering with Save the Children against COVID-19

With support from Australia, Save the Children Philippines has been implementing the project Children’s Access to Quality Alternative Learning Modalities in Safe Spaces in the BARMM as part of the Education Pathways to Peace in Mindanao program.

The project is a direct response to the Bangsamoro Ministry of Basic, Higher, and Technical Education’s call for a more consolidated and coordinated effort in responding to the emerging needs of children on quality education. It aims to protect every child’s right to learn amid the COVID-19 pandemic through alternative education and distance learning opportunities.

The COVID-19-adaptive project aims to reach 90 schools across BARMM’s nine school divisions using age-appropriate, gender-sensitive, inclusive, COVID-safe, and culturally-sensitive learning modalities. Direct beneficiaries include at least 14,400 children, 4,000 adults, 450 school personnel, and 100 partner institutions. The estimated indirect beneficiaries, through offline and online information, education, and communications materials, are around 362,000 children and adults.

Operationally, the project is focusing on developing and distributing learning materials for students and teaching packages for teachers and parents, as well as improving the capacity of teachers, parents, and other caregivers on alternative learning delivery during the pandemic. To keep learners and education personnel safe from COVID-19, the project also distributed Hygiene Sustainability Kits in schools.

The project undertakes advocacy campaigns related to children’s rights and protection, mental health and psychosocial support, and psychological first aid. This is in response to ground realities that the COVID-19 pandemic does not only cause health hazard to learners, but also takes a toll on their physical and mental wellbeing.

“We cannot afford to lose children in this pandemic. Aside from ensuring that they remain healthy and free from COVID-19, we must also do our best to guarantee that they remain learning in a place that is safe – physically, mentally, and psychosocially,” Muyot added.

“Our work does not end when the pandemic ends. We will not stop until all children, regardless of race, religion, sex, and status in life, are educated, safe, protected, and have recovered from the blow of this pandemic. We look forward to our continued and fruitful partnership with Australia in transforming this aspiration into a reality.”

Road safety advocates demand safer speed limits on city and municipal roads

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

A group of road safety advocates called for local government units to set and enforce safe speed limits on city and municipal roads. Led by law group ImagineLaw, the 35 organizations represent and comprise vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, commuters, children, older people, and persons with disabilities.

“Every hour, a person dies on Philippine roads due to road crashes. It could be any one of us—a person cycling on the way to work, a parent walking home from the market, or a courier delivering our latest online purchase,” said the group in a statement released to the public.

“We are all road users, and we all risk our lives every time we travel for as long as motor vehicles travel at high speeds on roads where people mix with traffic,” the group said.

The group—composed of civil society organizations, student councils, cycling community representative, as well as the government agency mandated to formulate policies concerning disability issues and concerns, the National Council on Disability Affairs—makes their call as the United Nations (UN) celebrates the 6th Global Road Safety Week this May 17 to 23, with the theme Streets for Life: #Love30.

The road safety advocates demanded the Philippine government “to act urgently to keep all road users safe and to #Love30 by limiting motor vehicle speeds to 30kph or less on roads where we walk, live, and play.” Their demand? Streets for life—shareable, walkable, and livable streets.

Their statement is timely for the Philippines where 12,487 people were killed in road crashes in 2018. Half of the people who die on Philippine roads are vulnerable road users, who are at the greatest risk of being struck by speeding motor vehicles.

Speeding makes roads unsafe because it increases both crash risk and crash severity. In other words, the faster a motor vehicle travels, the longer it takes to stop to avoid hitting a pedestrian or a cyclist or even another vehicle, and the more likely that a crash will result in severe injuries or death.

According to the World Health Organization, giving local authorities the power to reduce national speeds and to manage speed within their locality is important because national speed limits do not always correspond to the appropriate speed when the road environment changes.

In the Philippines, it is councilors from LGUs that know the actual road conditions best and are in the best position to classify their roads to set safe speed limits. However, the group lamented that “less than 2% of all LGUs are reported to have enacted speed limit ordinances that set safe speed limits, such as 30kph on city or municipal roads and 20kph on barangay roads and crowded streets.”

The group said that “without these interventions [speed limit ordinances and speed enforcement], the rising number of road deaths, particularly of vulnerable road users… will only continue to rise."



They reiterated their call for urgent government action and state that “[e]very hour of inaction by the government means another life lost on our roads.”




To read the group’s statement, you may visit http://www.facebook.com/imaginelawPH.

PLDT Enterprise eyes rise of SD-WAN, SASE

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

PLDT Enterprise is seeing software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and secure access service edge (SASE) architecture as two of the most in-demand technologies for businesses in the next few years.

In PLDT Enterprise’s recently concluded Tech Talk ON-AIR, Vice President and Head for PLDT Enterprise Fixed-Core Business Solutions Gary Ignacio said that SD-WAN has already reached its inflection point, accelerated by the new market dynamics. “The enterprise market has fully matured and has now embraced SD-WAN as their wide-area networking technology of choice. We’re anticipating its sustained momentum and growth over the next few years,” he said.

SD-WAN enables businesses to interconnect their network of branches and users through a highly-intelligent, software-driven platform, leveraging all available network underlay technologies such as MPLS, fiber broadband, LTE and 5G. This could help industries, such as banks, to simplify network management, optimize data traffic flow, and enable highly resilient, always on connections.

“Close to two-thirds of our local banks are pursuing transformational projects to enhance their digital capabilities and that number just continues to increase,” he added.

Likewise, he also stressed that PLDT Enterprise recognizes the importance of data security, and as such, is pioneering SASE to ensure a fully secure ecosystem where privacy and protection policies are fully enforced. “SASE will continue to get a lot of traction as companies put in place the right technologies to be able to connect and secure, not only their physical locations but their entire user base and end-devices as well. The PLDT Group has established a very strong foundation for this, out of our internal cybersecurity capabilities and best practices, and this will be further enriched by our strategic partnerships from the incumbent and emerging leaders in the field”

Other industries which have been benefitting from these two technologies include the retail sector and the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, among others.

ePLDT President and CEO and SVP and Head for PLDT and Smart Enterprise Business Groups Jovy Hernandez assured the company’s unbreakable commitment to providing digital solutions that will help businesses build a solid foundation amid the COVID-19 crisis.

“Over the last decade, multiple technologies have come to the fore and a lot more are emerging that will revolutionize the way we do things. And it is our aspiration at PLDT Enterprise to become every organization’s technology partner who can create the right mix of innovations and solutions which can deliver real value to their business,” said Hernandez.

“It is much more than just bandwidth. We strive to answer the needs of businesses today for a business-grade internet connection, the need for accessibility for on-premise and cloud applications and to manage multiple locations so that they can become truly resilient in this new age of business.”

PLDT Enterprise has been providing resilient connectivity for the business industry through bandwidth solutions such as BEYOND FIBER, Branch-in-a-Box, and PLDT SD-WAN.

BEYOND FIBER is designed to be three times more reliable for businesses which comes with a minimum speed equivalent to 90 percent of the subscribed bandwidth at 90 service reliability. This service promise currently remains unmatched in the industry.

Branch-in-A-Box, meanwhile, is a platform built for businesses that need to connect, protect, and manage multiple locations through easy to deploy and easy to manage ICT solutions that already come seamlessly stacked.

PLDT Enterprise’s TechTalk ON-AIR aims to discover the best practices of industry leaders in fueling their business growth by tackling the development and the presence of e-industries.

Hernandez said that it is a way of empowering customers and viewers with the information they will need to succeed.

“We have several events lined up for the year and we can expect more meaningful discussions and insights as there are technologies that we should be looking at to put all of these together,” he said.

For more information, visit pldtenterprise.com