Special Education Public School in Philippines

Hello, My name is David. My partner Ron and I have "adopted" a Special Education Center in a public school in Angeles City, Pampanga, Philippines. (Angeles City is the former site of USA's Clark Air Force Base.) The SPED Center is part of a larger public elementary school that Ron attended as a child. That gave us the initial connection to this school. I was an elementary teacher for 33 years in the USA, part of my career working in the area of special education. That provided a further connection to this school. During a visit to the Philippines years ago, we toured the school and learned a lot about it. The sister-in-law of a close friend in the Philippines is a teacher in the SPED Center. That further connection "sealed the deal", so to speak. We decided to help as best we could over the past seven years. We often raise money and purchase school supplies that we have sent and then distribute directly to the students when we visit, or through family members & friends living nearby. The Public Schools in the Philippines are very different than in the USA. Each student's familiy must purchase a uniform and ALL school supplies for their child. The parents even pay the electric bill for their child's classroom so they can have air conditioning. As this is a public school, and not among the many private schools, the majority of the families are quite poor. This is the ONLY public school special education center for many miles around. There is no transportation provided by the school. Many of the parents of the special needs students come with their children from far away via public transportation, then stay at school and volunteer in the classroom, as the trip back home and back again would cost a lot. And by the time they got home they would need to turn around right away and head back to pick up their child. The special needs children educated at this center fall into many different categories: Hearing Impaired, Visually Impaired, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cognitively Impaired, and Specific Learning Disability. During our visits we continue to be impressed by the teachers, the parents, and the students.

This year we have decided to set up a Go Fund Me fundraiser for the first time ever. We are going to try to raise enough money to provide the school with a Perkins Brailler (used by the visually impaired students for writing assignments). When we visited the school years ago, we saw how this was used. It was explained to us that this expensive item was not actually owned by the school. The family of a particular student then enrolled was lending it to the school while their child was a student there. By now, that student will have graduated and taken the Brailler with him to his next school. We would like to raise funds to purchase a Brailler for the school to have permanently. Any extra money will be used for the shipping to the Philippines, and to purchase other school supplies to fill up the box we send. We will provide documentation (receipts and photographs) of the entire process.

We appreciate your time in having read our story, and we hope that you might consider a small donation to our fund.

Love,

David & Ron