By: ROGER C.MELO
Amandangay Elementary School was one of the three schools in Tabontabon District, Tabontabon, Leyte that was chosen by DepEd to become a recipient of Gulayan sa Paaralan Program . We were thankful then of this big opportunity and privilege for this would be of big help to the families of our school children since most of them are low income earners and besides most of them are 4Ps members.
In this connection, our school were given by DepEd P10, 000 to start the program. We bought different garden tools, seeds and other materials to be used in the implementation of the Gulayan sa Paaralan Program.
After that, I, together with the teaching force of our school called for a Parent’s Meeting at once to inform them of the said program and amount given by our department.
During the meeting, it was decided that we will have our gulayan at the back of our school buildings since we have a wider space there. Immediately the day after, the parents came to our school to help in the Pintakasi.
Many of our parents, barangay officials and even the LGU of the municipality of Tabontabon were so supportive of our program.
The Municipal agriculturist Arturo Juanico, together with his staff visited our school. They gave us an orientation on the different strategies in raising different vegetable products. They also gave us some seeds and organic fertilizers.
As of now, we already started the program. The parents already planted different seeds like ampalaya, okra, tomatoes, pechay, string beans, patola, kangkong and eggplant. They will still plant other vegetable plants like squash, pipino and watermelon.
We are hoping that our Gulayan sa Paaralan Program would prosper. This would be of big help in our school to support and sustain our other program which is the School Based Feeding Program. Also, since most of the families of our pupils are low income earners this would help them in their day to day living .
All of these would help banish malnutrition in our school and alleviate poverty in our beloved barangay – Barangay Amandangay, Tabontabon, Leyte. (Note: the author is a teacher of the Amandangay Elementary School, Tabontabon, Leyte)
