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Life in HEC
Life in HEC
Hope Education Center gives dropouts another shot
By Called and Sent Staff
DAVAO, Philippines—Leading her students through a history lesson at Hope Education Center, Mi Amor Dayap doesn’t see dropouts or druggies or poor single moms.
She sees future engineers and teachers and community leaders.
HEC was started last year by Hope for the Nations Philippines, a child- and youth-focused mission in the Agdao section of the Philippines' second-largest city. In a city teeming with poverty and drug-related violence, Agdao is especially notorious for both. Mi Amor, a former babysitter for ministry founders Patrick and Inneke Elaschuk, decided to put her education degree to use at the school after watching a video on personal transformation at a YWAM discipleship training course.
She wondered how the kids in Agdao were going to be transformed if no one was working them through it.
“That’s why I’m working with out-of-school youth,” says Mi Amor, 29. “What drives me is a heart for students, that they will be given an education and have hope.”
On the island of Mindanao, nearly half of all grade school students drop out before passing 6th grade. Out-of-school youths aren’t exactly rare.
What’s rare here the Philippines’ Second City is a non-formal high school where kids can attend school days a week to earn their diplomas. The public school system offers an alternative high school program that meets on Saturdays, based on a Mindanao-specific curriculum from the Department of Education. But because kids usually don’t study during the week in that program, they have a high failure rate, Patrick says.
The school took that same curriculum and plugged it into an all-week program. The school also teaches the government’s skills training program, known as TESDA. Last year, Hope offered TESDA courses in electrical and electronics. Six students finished the TESDA program last year. All six passed their exam, qualifying them for many jobs in those fields.
To get them there, though, Mi Amor has to overcome a lot of hurdles that the kids haul in with them: lack of routine, the fatalism of the squatter villages, the emotional turmoil of broken families, lack of nutritious food, guns, street fights—the list gets long.
Mi Amor and the other staff at Hope for the Nations’ compound, House of Jubilee, swing at all those barriers with two clubs: discipline and Christian discipleship.
“They think, ‘This is my fate,’” Mi Amor says. “Discipline is one thing we are really posing to them again and again and again. These are not the kind of students with a motivation to study.”
The message has gotten through to Mae Corro. Mae, 19, dropped out of school when she was 14. A single mom with an infant son, Mae easily could be just another statistic under the “poor single Filipino mothers” category (the percentage of female-headed households jumped from 12.2 percent in 1995 to 15.4 percent in 2003, according to a recent government report).
But since coming to faith in Christ in April, Mae says her entire outlook on life has turned around. Now in her second year at HEC, Mae is studying hard to pass her final exam in February, go to college and become a teacher. She says she still has problems in her life—no job, little money, pressure from her old barkada to drop out—but now she has people to encourage her through them and keep her focused on God.
“When I realized how good He is, and how sinful I am, He forgave me,” says Mae, who wants go on to college and become a teacher. “When I call to him, He’s always ready to accept me as His daughter.”
What has been difficult for Patrick and the other staff at House of Jubilee is watching young men they’ve brought up in the faith get cut down by the streets. Several members of the original group of boys that first came to faith in Christ through the ministry have been shot in street violence, victims of their former lives.
Watching that happen over and over spurred Hope for the Nations to open the school in the first place. It keeps them pushing the students toward bigger things, professionally and spiritually.
“I really believe that they’ll be leaders,” Mi Amor says. “At the same time, we’re discipling students to take leadership in being godly citizens.”
Mi Amor says Mae is bright and should be able to pass the exam. If Mae’s spiritual turnaround is any indication, she is well on her way.
“Before, when I didn’t know the Lord, I had no fear to do what was evil,” Mae says. “It’s not like now—I have a fear of doing things that are not pleasing to Him. I have challenges and temptation, but I can overcome it.
“I feel so free.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.
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Mae Corro
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DAVAO, Philippines—Leading her students through a history lesson at Hope Education Center, Mi Amor Dayap doesn’t see dropouts or druggies or poor single moms.
She sees future engineers and teachers and community leaders.
HEC was started last year by Hope for the Nations Philippines, a child- and youth-focused mission in the Agdao section of the Philippines' second-largest city. In a city teeming with poverty and drug-related violence, Agdao is especially notorious for both. Mi Amor, a former babysitter for ministry founders Patrick and Inneke Elaschuk, decided to put her education degree to use at the school after watching a video on personal transformation at a YWAM discipleship training course.
She wondered how the kids in Agdao were going to be transformed if no one was working them through it.
“That’s why I’m working with out-of-school youth,” says Mi Amor, 29. “What drives me is a heart for students, that they will be given an education and have hope.”
On the island of Mindanao, nearly half of all grade school students drop out before passing 6th grade. Out-of-school youths aren’t exactly rare.
What’s rare here the Philippines’ Second City is a non-formal high school where kids can attend school days a week to earn their diplomas. The public school system offers an alternative high school program that meets on Saturdays, based on a Mindanao-specific curriculum from the Department of Education. But because kids usually don’t study during the week in that program, they have a high failure rate, Patrick says.
The school took that same curriculum and plugged it into an all-week program. The school also teaches the government’s skills training program, known as TESDA. Last year, Hope offered TESDA courses in electrical and electronics. Six students finished the TESDA program last year. All six passed their exam, qualifying them for many jobs in those fields.
To get them there, though, Mi Amor has to overcome a lot of hurdles that the kids haul in with them: lack of routine, the fatalism of the squatter villages, the emotional turmoil of broken families, lack of nutritious food, guns, street fights—the list gets long.
Mi Amor and the other staff at Hope for the Nations’ compound, House of Jubilee, swing at all those barriers with two clubs: discipline and Christian discipleship.
“They think, ‘This is my fate,’” Mi Amor says. “Discipline is one thing we are really posing to them again and again and again. These are not the kind of students with a motivation to study.”
The message has gotten through to Mae Corro. Mae, 19, dropped out of school when she was 14. A single mom with an infant son, Mae easily could be just another statistic under the “poor single Filipino mothers” category (the percentage of female-headed households jumped from 12.2 percent in 1995 to 15.4 percent in 2003, according to a recent government report).
But since coming to faith in Christ in April, Mae says her entire outlook on life has turned around. Now in her second year at HEC, Mae is studying hard to pass her final exam in February, go to college and become a teacher. She says she still has problems in her life—no job, little money, pressure from her old barkada to drop out—but now she has people to encourage her through them and keep her focused on God.
“When I realized how good He is, and how sinful I am, He forgave me,” says Mae, who wants go on to college and become a teacher. “When I call to him, He’s always ready to accept me as His daughter.”
What has been difficult for Patrick and the other staff at House of Jubilee is watching young men they’ve brought up in the faith get cut down by the streets. Several members of the original group of boys that first came to faith in Christ through the ministry have been shot in street violence, victims of their former lives.
Watching that happen over and over spurred Hope for the Nations to open the school in the first place. It keeps them pushing the students toward bigger things, professionally and spiritually.
“I really believe that they’ll be leaders,” Mi Amor says. “At the same time, we’re discipling students to take leadership in being godly citizens.”
Mi Amor says Mae is bright and should be able to pass the exam. If Mae’s spiritual turnaround is any indication, she is well on her way.
“Before, when I didn’t know the Lord, I had no fear to do what was evil,” Mae says. “It’s not like now—I have a fear of doing things that are not pleasing to Him. I have challenges and temptation, but I can overcome it.
“I feel so free.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All rights reserved.