Young Focus has been sponsoring children from Smokey Mountain in Manila since 1992. It became evident that sponsoring alone does not create enough leverage for a brighter future. Many children miss the opportunity to develop their talents within the Filipino education system offered to them. Many children from the slums wrestle with low self-esteem and lack support from their parents.
Socially and mentally they struggle to keep up with their peers from the ‘normal’ areas of Manila.
The children, sponsored by Young Focus, are from a very poor background. They live in squatter areas on or around Smokey Mountain. Their home is typically a shack of a few square meters, in which an entire family has to eat and sleep. These make for impossible conditions as far as studying or doing homework is concerned.
This is where the vision of setting up a Student Center started...
The Student Center now means that Young Focus can provide the students with what they need in order to study. The Student Center offers them the following facilities and services:
- Computers the students can use for their schoolwork as well as private use
- Staff who can assist them and rooms where they can be coached
- Educational programs and classrooms for English and Maths tutorials
- Workshops covering all sorts of subjects relevant to the students: career planning, creative development, any school subject, specific courses, etc.
- Room to study
- Library
- Room for fun and recreation
Together with a committed team of 10 local fulltime employees and many volunteers, this Student Center enables Young Focus to fully prepare the sponsored students for the future, a future escaping for good the life in the slums – and the ‘prison’ of poverty.
Experience has shown that the sponsorship program combined with individual coaching, extra tutorials and the right tools such as computers etc., gives the student a very strong foundation and is far more effective than sponsorship alone.
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