Ateneo de Davao University’s Gwyneth Marie Vasquez and Tagakolu school coordinator Matet Gonzalo talk to Rappler about the community that inspired Vasquez's valedictory speech, months after it went viral.
When Vasquez conducted her undergraduate thesis in anthropology, she coordinated with Matet Gonzalo, a colleague from AdDU’s anthropology department who’s a Tagakolu school coordinator in Malita. , launched by the AdDU in 2020 “to address the problem of online connectivity, democratize access to the Internet, and improve the quality of life for people in Mindanao.”
But more than her findings, Vasquez also learned a lot from living with the town’s Tagakolu community. Much of her time in Malita, she said, was spent with kids in internet shops and with students crossing the river going to school. Even after the country gained independence, the Tagakolu continued to lose their ancestral domain through apparent land grabbing by settlers in the lowlands. [READ:“Society and its institutions have been designed or organized to oppress or to lead to the exploitation and the oppression of indigenous peoples,” Vasquez said.
“Sometimes, life’s just hard. They look to the future and don’t see anything ahead of them. Their parents can’t afford to send them to school, which is in the town proper or in the city. Children in these families become aware of their situation, and many of them lose the determination to study or to find a job to sustain their education,” she said in Bisaya.“In the mid-90’s, when I was still in high school, we had to cross a stream with no bridge just to get to school.
Gonzalo lamented how, despite a few positive developments in communities, not everyone gets to experience them. One thing society can at least do to address inequality, Gonzalo immediately pointed out, is to build collaborations among various sectors and create avenues for the less privileged.
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