Philippine farm school offers poor students chance to study

Published: 2007-08-23

IRIGA, Philippines (CNS) -- Alvin de Leon began the school day by washing out a pigsty with a power hose. The 15-year-old rose at 5 a.m., as he does every day, to clean 40 pigpens at the farm run by Daughters of St. Augustine nuns in Iriga, about 200 miles southeast of Manila. "This takes about one and a half hours," de Leon told the Asian church news agency UCA News in early August. He swept around the pens and washed up for his classes, which began at 7:30 a.m. De Leon is among 157 students who live at the Fatima Center for Human Development and take high school classes at the center's farm school under a work-study type of program. "My mother has no job and takes care of my (grandma). We don't have a farm, just a small house, so I came (here)," said de Leon, who came to the center in 2005. "I would like to study to be an electrician," he added. At the farm school, he joins other residents and day students for morning classes in mathematics, science, languages and history. In afternoon classes they learn about sustainable agriculture, home economics and moral values.

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