Restoring Faith

If the word excitement was tangible, it would have skipped and flew around Bayawan City National High School. It would even be just as grand as the concrete welcome banner announcing one’s entry into Bayawan City proper. Its classrooms formed a perfect U around perhaps an hectare of wide open space bordered by cropped santan bushes and sprawling rubber and jackfruit trees. Post-war and prefab buildings were stuck together like train cars, almost envious of the unpainted but new two-story building where the computer laboratory was housed.

Excitement at Bayawan City NHS showed itself in the drum and bugle band that greeted the 12-member WVCST iSchools Installation Team and in the garlands that slipped in our necks as soon as we came out of the van. It was obvious that everybody knew the reason behind our presence in a city very near the border of Negros Occidental and Oriental. Although many of the students were inside their classrooms, the craning necks gave them away. Back in 2007, in the quiet city of Bayawan, we tasted what genuine excitement and gratitude was like.

Then iSchools Project Manager Engr. Roly Gambol spearheaded the involvement of the Western Visayas College of Science and Technology into the eQuality Programs of CICT. It was a program he thought he would be most helpful to schools that are deemed unreachable by technology plus it was something he liked doing. The site inspection especially in the Negros area, at first, was done by Engr. Gambol alone. “There was this time the principal of the school told me not to go back because if I did, I may not be able to get out again.” Bent on finding a school without any computer unit, he innocently went into a rebel infested area.

It was in of these survey trips that Engr. Gambol happened to pass by Bayawan City National High School. He strolled inside, went to see the principal and explained the project to the surprised and perplexed audience. He then thought he found a likely recipient of the iSchools Program - no computers, with cell phone provider signals, and more importantly, has a low security risk and with a very supportive local government unit (LGU).

When Engr. Gambol outlined the requirements of the program to the principal, Mr. Eduardo Lagos, it was received with open arms. The second floor of the newest building near the gate will be transformed into a computer laboratory, The Memorandum of Agreement will be processed, and the problem regarding the electrical connections will be discussed with the PTCA. The LGU readily funded any problems Mr. Lagos might have, even funding the trip of the three representatives to Iloilo City for the Sustainability Training Program. Bayawan’s welcome then to the digital information world was painless.

“I was the ICT Coordinator of the Division of Bayawan City before I became principal of the school,” Mr. Lagos said. “I was able to explain to my PTCA and also to the local government the necessity of the project.”

Bayawan’s joyous reception of the installation team was not an isolated incident. Engr. Gambol recalled a time when a huge banner and a drum and bugle band welcomed him to the school. “I was a bit embarrassed by the celebrity-like atmosphere,” he laughingly recalled. But his embarrassment was quickly erased by the genuine appreciation of a people just simply overjoyed for being chosen as recipient of the iSchool’s Program.

When the CILC Training came in the summer of 2008, the excitement and the joy were there, still plain and visible. “We decided to host the in-service training of the district this year,” Sir Lagos said. “We have our multimedia projector, we already know how to prepare presentations and we think this is one way in which we can raise funds to sustain the computer laboratory. More than that, we are the only school in the area with these kinds of facilities.”

Inside the computer laboratory, more than 20 teachers were bent on completing a CALC output prepared by trainors, Engr. Jun Badoles and Gilmore Baldevarona. All was silent save for the occasional explanations, questions and the click clack of the keyboard. All were quietly focused on their half-finished project on screen, barely glancing at the visitors who came in to inspect their progress. Even the announcement of the lunch break was greeted half-baked enthusiasm. Then one by one, the trainees reluctantly filed out of the laboratory one by one, some still hesitant to leave a half-finished work.

Bayawan was just one of the 12(?) schools under the umbrella of the WVCST iSchool’s Team. Although a few had a number of concerns as the project was implemented, one thing unified them all. All 12 received the project with the same degree of enthusiasm, gratitude and joy as the Bayawan community. All of them felt blessed and lucky.

Strangely, the WVCST iSchools Team felt blessed and happy too. In the course of the implementation of the project, we have found teamwork, camaraderie, friendships, the value of sacrifice, and purpose. We also found joy in the realization that beyond the computer laboratories that we helped install and the trainings we conducted, for every recipient school we have come across, we helped restore faith in the government and its programs. But most of all, we just knew that iSchools transcended beyond being just a mere project. Perhaps, its most indefinable accomplishment is in giving the people in the far flung communities like Bayawan the opportunity to confidently meet the technological world.