Help Return Filipino Children to a Safe School

Since 2007, All Hands and Hearts has had a mission to make an impact on post-disaster education and health by rebuilding disaster-resilient schools and investing in community-wide risk reduction and resilience training in affected Filipino communities where unmet needs are the greatest.

With this update, we are overjoyed to report that the first of our two schools, the Mahayag Elementary School, is 98% complete. 

Mahayag Elementary School is located in the village of Baranguay Mahayag, part of St. Bernard Municipality in Southern Leyte, Philippines.  Typhoon Odette caused significant damage to their facilities. 

The Mahayag Elementary School will have a new Cement Bamboo Frame Technology (CBFT) 2-classroom main building - able to be subdivided by partitions into 4 smaller rooms as needed.  CBFT is an innovative, sustainable, disaster resilient building system.  Base Bahay is a local partner who developed and trained AHAH on the CBFT design.  Our second CBFT project to date.

In addition to our construction scopes of work, AHAH provides community training activities like Disaster, Risk Reduction training, Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene training.  Child Protection Training is provided by local NGO-partner and subject matter expert, Streetlight.

The first day of construction on this project was 13 May 2024 and the first day for volunteers on-site was 28 May 2024.  Today, the main building, new WASH facilities including a 3-cubicle washroom, hand-washing station, drinking water station, and septic tank are 98% complete.  The only items left to complete are the interior partition walls, new exterior landscaping and the school's first playground.  Full completion and the school handover dance party is scheduled for mid-October.

Meanwhile, work continues on the Saint Nino National High School.  Sto Nino NHS is a school that curre!ntly serves grades 7-10 located close to our Mahayag base.  School administrators would like to expand their facilities to include grades 11-12, but they are in need of additional classrooms to accomodate those students.

AHAH will construct a large new 2-classroom building with interior partition walls along with a drinking water station.  Students at Sto Nino NHS will participate in all of the same community engagement and training events.

The first day of construction on this project was 5 August 2024. The team has worked with its partners through some challenges with on-site excavation and drainage issues and new foundation re-design details as a result.  That said, excavation is 70% complete, drainage work is 98% complete, and the water system is 25% complete.  Foundation work is expected to start once the new design is finalized.  Full completion and handover of this school is expected mid-December.

To date:  215 unique volunteers - 125 of whom are Filipino nationals - have donated 15,849 hours of construction labor to positively impact 187 students and 20 teachers and school staff.

PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR LATEST PHOTOS INCLUDING WASH TRAINING FOR STUDENTS AND NEW SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION PICS!

Thank you!

Links:

• Philippines Typhoon Relief

Dear Donors,

Our work in Southern Leyte kicked off in mid-May, where we aim to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for students affected by Typhoon Rai. All Hands and Hearts (AHAH) is constructing a disaster-resilient building for Mahayag Elementary School, featuring two classrooms using Cement Bamboo Frame Technology (CBFT), an innovative and sustainable system. In collaboration with a local engineering and architecture partner.  In addition, we will offer training and a maintenance manual for the CBFT building to ensure its longevity and foster community ownership, conduct Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) training to prepare the community for future disasters and coordinate Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and Child Protection training with local specialists, inviting students, teachers, parents and community members to participate in these public events throughout the program.

A full staff team of 12 - 50% international and 50% Filipino - the first 8 of our 25  residential volunteers and 10 local masons and carpenters broke ground for the foundation that will become the new building with its 4 new classrooms.  Please see the exciting new pictures reflecting this flurry of recent activity.

For the first time, our Female Mason Training program - long a fixture in our Nepal programs - will be implemented in the Philippines. We invited four local women to be trained in construction skills and CBFT building techniques throughout the course of the 5-month build. These women are the sole wage earners for their households.  They have indicated a strong desire to cross over traditional gender roles and seek job training in the construction industry - both to care for their own homes and to seek paid work in masonry positions in the future.  We look forward to reporting on this wonderful experience in future monthly reports.

Thank you to all our current and future donors for your interest and support for another All Hands and Hearts Safe Schools project!  We are so excited to share this program with you.

Christine