DAMMAM, 16 April 2006 — The schoolhouse at Bibit village in Nueva Ecija, north of Manila, has only two rooms and one is shared by Grades 1-3 pupils and the other by those in Grades 4-6.

Made of cheap construction materials such as nipa for its walls and cogon grass for the roof, the structure is also dilapidated that the pupils get wet inside when it rains hard.

“When it rains, the teachers ask the pupils to cover their heads and school’s books and other facilities have to be covered with plastic sheets,” says Maximina Sicat, education district supervisor of the district where the school falls under.

But come schoolyear 2006-2007, which starts in mid-June, the pupils of Bibit would be studying under a concrete schoolhouse, thanks to eight Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in the Eastern Region of Saudi Arabia.

Each of the eight bagong bayani or “new heroes,” as OFWs are called, contributed $1,000 for a two-classroom building in Bibit through the Classroom Galing sa Manggagawang Pilipino Abroad (CGMA) program. Initiated by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), each classroom is worth $4,000, or more than 200,000 pesos.

The donors are Dr. Florencio Arcano Jr., Renato Banda, Alberto Banzon, Rodolfo Buenavista, Antonio Castro Jr., Edilberto Mendoza, Ronald Sitchon, and Glicerio Tuazon, and their respective families.

Just recently, the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction of the two-classroom building was held at the new location of the Bibit Elementary School at barangay Macabaclay in Gapan, a city in Nueva Ecija province.

Among the officials present during the inauguration were Alan Macaraya, former Philippine labor attaché to Bahrain who is now DOLE director for Central Luzon.

The donation has inspired the pupils and teachers of the school, said Grade 1 teacher Fanny Rose Aviles. “Even if what they have for lunch is only rice, you can see their eagerness to study,” she said.

Bibit Principal Raymundo de Guzman said, however, that the school will have to continue with its multi-grade approach until such time that there are enough classrooms and teachers. “Our two teachers have undergone special training to handle the multi-grade system where they have to teach three levels at one time,” de Guzman said.

Lack of classrooms and teachers are a perennial problem in the country that in schools with huge populations, classes are held by shifts. In other villages, classes are sometimes held in makeshift classrooms.

For Grade 6 pupil Rachelle Tarraya, however, neither distance nor classroom congestion would prevent her from going to school.

“I walk one-and-a-half hours to reach our school. But it doesn’t matter because I want to finish my studies and help my parents in the future,” she said.

Sitchon, one of the donors, said his contribution to the Bibit project was a promise he made to his schoolteacher mother to help in building a classroom.

“I joined the noble project of my friends in order to fulfill my promise to my mother. I do wish to contribute another classroom in my own hometown,” he said.

Buenavista, also one of the donors, said: “I am happy that we were able to help the students who are in need of classrooms and share some of our blessings. We do believe that the children are the hope of our country.”

According to the Department of Education, the Philippines’ growing classroom shortage in the public elementary and secondary levels was estimated at 44,000 in the past schoolyear.

The Philippine labor attaché in the Eastern Region, Delmer Cruz, said that if all overseas Filipinos, both migrants and contract workers, contribute to the CGMA project, the classroom shortage could be drastically minimized.

Thousands of Filipinos elsewhere have already done the same and continue to do so. Last year, one OFW in Riyadh even donated an amount good for one classroom.

The beauty of the CGMA classroom design is that it is not as costly as those designed by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for Department of Education, yet it even better.

DOLE officials reportedly kept the DPWH out of the CGMA, tapping instead the Filipino Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Inc., which had long been building classrooms for poor communities free of charge.

Donors to the CGMA are also entitled to know where every penny they contributed have gone.