Gov’t caravan for IP brings services, instant teaching job

MEMBERS of IP communities listen as representatives of government agencies talk about the Serbisyo Caravan. Karl Angelica Ocampo

A Higaonon man, Raymund Mandahinog, 24, did not expect to be hired on the very same day that he met Education Secretary Armin Luistro, FSC.

Mandahinog spoke at the government’s recent Serbisyo Caravan in Gingoog City in Misamis Oriental province about the scholarships that Higaonon youth like him received from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples and the local government.

An initiative of the Office of the President under the Cabinet Cluster on Security, Justice and Peace, the caravan serves to link the “lumad” to the government, as well as to nongovernment organizations and the private sector. As part of the caravan, booths were set up in Gingoog City by several departments—Education, Health, Social Welfare and Development, Agriculture, Labor and Employment, and Environment and Natural Resources.

Mandahinog told the audience his scholarship helped him earn a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education degree from Gingoog Christian School, where he graduated cum laude.

“After my speech, Secretary Luistro stood up and told me I was going to be a full-fledged teacher of the DepEd (Department of Education)-Gingoog City division. I was so happy! I could not believe he did that,” Mandahinog said.

On the spot, Luistro assigned Mandahinog to teach Higaonon children at the Center for Indigenous People in District 3, Gingoog City division.

MANDAHINOG Karl Angelica Ocampo

Mandahinog is a licensed teacher having passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers administered by the Professional Regulation Commission.

Mandahinog, who also graduated valedictorian from Kalipay National High School, considers his first teaching assignment a fulfillment of his dream to see Higaonon children receive an education “so they can rise from poverty.”

In fact, Mandahinog was what the DepEd was looking for—a teacher who could teach indigenous peoples (IP) according to the ways of their group, but who is also able to comply with DepEd standards so that the education they would receive in the IP school would be recognized even outside their community.

Secretary Armin Luistro

“That is precisely the reason even now in DepEd, we are working with our IP education framework to acculturate and also localize the curriculum,” Luistro said.

The DepEd also encourages the lumad to celebrate their customs and traditions, and to use their cultural freedom to preserve and pass on their unique tradition to future generations.

“Your government is not sleeping,” Undersecretary Emmanuel Bautista, executive director of the Cabinet Cluster, told the lumad gathered in one booth.

The Serbisyo Caravan gave the lumad free legal services, medical check-ups and minor surgical operations. Other lumad received food packs and seedling and livelihood packages from different government agencies.