COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Astorga Elementary School needed a boost with literacy program having had consistently poor ratings in children’s evaluation and performance in reading and writing. In early 2017,the  FPVI Team worked with teachers to devise a method to improve literacy levels by conducting additional lessons in reading, and in English. Subsequently, storybooks and information books for different reading ability levels have been made available to children and their teachers as learning resource.

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In 2020, FPVI's Literacy Enhancement Program has been moved to Banawang Elementary School, with a planned extension to Balire Elementary School. A 10-day Summer Camp Program in 2020 was planned for children of Banawang Elementary School but had to be cancelled due to the COVID19 pandemic.

The Program aims to boost children’s reading and literacy levels by conducting additional lessons in reading. 

FPVI joined forces with Beengo Farm and the Leyte Electric Cooperative (LEYECO 3) to introduce beekeeping advocacy in schools with the launching of Banawang Elementary School in October 2018 as the first bee-friendly school in Leyte. The initiative aims to inculcate awareness and motivate children to love and respect nature, instill a sense of individual responsibility for the preservation of the environment and for maintaining a healthy ecosystem, and to learn and appreciate the importance of bees and the benefits of the process of pollination. On the community front, the project encourages cooperation and productive collaboration in the smallest barangay in the smallest town in Leyte.

Supplementing literacy programs and efforts in Banawang Elementary School, FPVI offered its first reading intervention program designed to help students in Grades 5 & 6 as they prepare for and transition to high school. A training program was conducted by a Reading Expert from UP Diliman QC who works with children in underprivileged urban communities to train Reading Mentors out of our FPVI students. Having successfully completed the training, the newly minted Reading Mentors jumpstarted the 2-week Reading & Rhythm Program, an innovative approach to getting children to be avid readers and interested in books, resulting not just in improved reading ability by their mentees but also a better prepared cohort moving up to Grade 7.

The Reading & Rhythm Program was brought to the community of Barangay Balire in the summer of 2025 with 30 participating children with the active collaboration of the Barangay Captain and Tunga LGU staff. As with the 1st R&R in 2024, challenges were abundant, but the children became more and more receptive to their now experienced Reading Mentors every day they returned to the barangay hall. While the program improved the reading ability and comprehension of children transitioning to high school, they also enhance the Reading Mentors' teaching skills, as well as their sense of responsibility to the younger children they mentor.  

In time for Tunga's 76th founding anniversary in November 2025, an exhibition of old photographs mostly from the Domingo A. Ponferrada Collection and also from the community, photographs that survived the onslaught of super typhoon Yolanda, opened in the Tunga Municipal Hall. The narrative focused on the efforts of the people who shepherded Tunga from barrio to a municipality, independent from Barugo. It is the first exhibition of its kind in the town and also the first time that many townspeople saw photographs of their parents, grandparents and relatives in the backdrop of the 1949 inauguration of the new municipality.

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FPVI loaned photos from the family collection and provided the curatorial concept and design for the exhibition, sourced some of the community photos and managed the printing, fabrication and installation of the exhibition with support from Tunga LGU.

In conjunction with the photo exhibition which served as a teaser, the heritage book is planned for publication in time for the 77th founding anniversary of Tunga in November 2026. FPVI is supporting the LGU project from book concept to content design in collaboration with Tunga LGU Executive Office and Legislative Office, LGU staff, and teachers from the Tunga Central District School, barangay elementary schools, the Gregorio C. Catenza National High School, and the community at large.