Paaralang Pantao page1e

    There is a huge mountain of garbage in Payatas, Quezon City, northwest of Manila, in the Philippines. The dumping of garbage started in 1983, and even now hundreds of truckloads of garbage are brought in every day as collected from nearby cities. The unclassified garbage dumped almost at will has in the past 20 years changed the area as it is today. In the dry season, methane-filled gases set the Mountain afire, the flames going up here and there and the whole area left covered with poisonous smoke. While in the rainy season, marshes are widespread turning the Mountain wet and smelly. And, though a natural consequence, there are quite a lot of flies and mosquitoes.
    The village around the Mountain is a large cluster of barracks and other poor constructions made of abandoned material mostly collected from among the garbage. About 10,000 people make a marginal living as they collect and sell the items they find reusable or recyclable. They are called scavenger and their home a "Smoky Mountain."

    Children also join the grownups pick up what they think is valuable from the garbage. It makes a dangerous environment far from recommendable to young people. Few children wear boots though many broken pieces of glassware are scattered all over the ground or remain buried underneath to cut. Many protect themselves with rubber sandals, if not unprotected at all. Though poor, all these children ready and willing to work, helping their younger brothers and sisters and their families as a whole. The poorest of the poor, including children, are often tempted to search the garbage for foodstuffs and leftovers.

    There is a free school at the foot of this Garbage Mountain, named "Paaralang Pantao" which means "Humane School" or "School of Humanity." It has been founded to help children long deprived of formal education. Reasons vary: extreme poverty is widespread; many children have no birth certificates, or their parents having been unable to receive an education barely realize the need to send their children to school. Leticia B. Reyes who is now Principal opened Paaralang Pantao when told of the plight of such underprivileged children and asked by weary parents to help educate their sons and daughters.

    It was in 1987 that Leticia popularly known by her nickname of "Letty" met a number of mothers and learned of their grave concern about the future of their children. Upon their request Letty decided to organize private classes for five children who first applied. The number steadily increased and in a month's time exceeded 40. This moved Letty one step ahead for the launching of a school.
    The official opening of Paaralang Pantao took place in 1989. The school as it began was a small shed covered by a simple bare tinplate roof with no ceiling. It had four walls, but there were no floor planks of wood. Placed in the classroom were plain handmade desks and chairs as they were contributed by the parents.
    Teachers are mothers volunteering from the Mountain neighborhood. They have a certain degree of learning in high school or college, and have gained some additional training for teaching from an NGO. They literally grope in the darkness for a most appropriate level of teaching for children in the area. They shared the responsibility of managing classes from the pre-school to the elementary school level.
    The classroom is run in a friendly and enjoyable atmosphere, which helps create for children the atmosphere of a home away from home. All the staff encourage children to uphold their own dignity in life and to consider the school as a place where they seek not only to learn how to read, write and calculate but to learn how to survive and overcome such difficulties as domestic violence or side-effects of shattered families.

    There is no requirement for uniform or tuition in Paaralang Pantao. All applicants will be admitted as long as they are willing to learn and have reached a certain age, and are assigned to appropriate classes according to their age and abilities. About 150 ranging in age from 3 to 20 are enrolled each year, and those children still climb the Mountain to sort out the garbage when free from school, pay for their stationery from their income and help support their families. Those willing to study further move to Government-recognized public schools down the Mountain as an initial step for higher learning. At least one has advanced to college and managed to graduate as a top student. Paaralang Pantao thus plays a key role in changing the lot of the children who would otherwise remain poor and hopeless in a world of uneven wealth.

    Leticia Reyes was born in June 1940 in Cabanatuan City, Luzon. A graduate from Jose Rizal University, she got married and brought up five children. After her husband passed away, Letty as she was popularly called migrated in 1982 to Payatas, which at the time was a beautiful landscape known for its fresh greenery. About half a year later, however, Payatas suddenly became the dumpsite of garbage as it was brought in from neighboring cities! Before she was aware, poor people had marched en masse into the area, turned it into a village of scavengers and started living on whatever "valuables" they found in the heap.
    Most villagers had received virtually no education. All coming from the countryside, they did not know the way of living in the city. Letty's struggle in the search for a better life in the Garbage Mountain thus began!
    In order for this community of villagers to help each other and to improve their lifestyles, Letty soon formed a Dumpsite Neighborhood Organization based on the participation of 240 member families. In addition she volunteered to lead its Community Service and helped strengthen the villagers' self-help program of securing safe potable water, electricity, medication and other essentials for human survival.
    Letty has since been providing a better education for underprivileged children in the area. In 1989 she founded Paaralang Pantao, and is dedicating whatever is left of her life as its principal to the building of a better future for a growing number of Payatas children.