ENRICH (Enhancing Numeracy and Reading through Identity and Cultural Heritage)
Project
Improving learning skills and providing supportive environment for primary graders are main outcomes of the federation in this life stage. They believed it can be achieved through collective efforts of parents, teachers, and other community members. Some of its accomplishments this year for LS 1 are:
- Early Language &Literacy & Numeracy (ELLN) training acquired by 45 teachers that reached 1, 350 target primary graders resulting to gradual improvement in reading and numeracy skills of its target beneficiaries resulting to gradual improvement
- Continuous awareness-raising on Child Protection among community leaders and local transport service providers to ensure safety of children from home to school
- Trained parent support groups to conduct parenting sessions like “Miles de Manos” (Thousands of Hands) module to help reduce the risk of violent behaviour of children in school and at home
- Child development session is still effective in reaching out to target participants. In the 1st and 2 nd quarter, a total of 996 children participated in various activities (i.e. children’s month celebration and peer tutoring). However, face-to-face activity like this was suspended due to COVID-19.
Lessons from the Pandemic
The continuous training to produce pool of children facilitators enabled the federation to continue its child development activities in the homes of its beneficiaries. The pandemic did not hinder in accessing meaningful participation of 116 parents and 216 children during quarantine period.
Meanwhile, the training on, and provision of Home-based Family Activity Kit (HFAK), is a potential means to keep implementation of activities rolling. It is also realized that the efforts to conduct parenting sessions were not put to waste as parents (who become adult facilitator at home) are familiar with the drill of the activity. Thus, they feel confident that home-based sessions is really possible.
And with the DepEd to implement blended means of teaching pupils (i.e. online and modular), same strategy can also be done to other LS2 activities. Meanwhile, the federation can also help greatly in augmenting localized strategy to help children still access free education through its strong partnership with DepEd.