On February 26, 2010, Rural Educational & Outreach Program (RECOP) received 1,000 books from PUSONG PINOY.
Here's a video from RECOP:
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RECOP is an 18-person volunteer team. They go to the mountains of Negros Occidental in the Philippines and provide outreach programs and supplies to children and parents of impoverished communities.
In the mountains, schoolchildren are so bereft of resources. They have so little - no crayons, no notebooks, no picture books, a few pieces of pad paper. Most of them go hungry but they strive to go to school. Normally, a student owns only one pair of footwear - rubber slippers. Most of the children go barefoot on the schoolgrounds for fear their slippers would wear out fast. In one of the schools, most of the students have never seen modeling clay or a watercolor paint brush.There is no electricity in these remote mountain areas. Only the most prominent family owns a generator-powered TV set. Most of the children have never been to town, much more to the bigger city. It is no wonder that most of the children drop out by Grade 4, a little after they have learned the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics.
By the age of 15, girls are set off to be married while boys work the land of their parents. Few completes high school and college is unheard of. RECOP believes that with exposure and resources, schoolchildren would learn how to dream of a better life. It is their hope that some would discover that they are not solely bound to the land they till and that there is a bigger world outside of that which they know of.
Pusong Pinoy salutes RECOP! We would like to thank Checcs Osmeña-Orbida and all the volunteers of RECOP for their tireless acts of kindness and generosity towards the schoolchildren and parents in the impoverished mountain schools of South Negros Occidental, Philippines.
Please support Pusong Pinoy's book drive and projects, so we can, in turn, continue to support great organizations like RECOP. We are collecting gently-used children's storybooks, picture books, and chapter books from preschool to 4th grade level. If you would like more information on how to donate books or to support our other projects, please email pusongpinoyorg@gmail.com.
