MANILA – – Some 360 students from 14 higher education institutions who are taking courses that support the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program are among the beneficiaries of the estate-owned Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) new scholarship program.
In a briefing Friday, Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) president and chief executive officer (CEO) Cecilia Borromeo said the scholarship program is part of the bank’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) program for education dubbed “Resources for Inclusive and Sustainable Education (RISE).
The five-year program, which is an offshoot of the bank’s Endowment for Education Program (DEEP), will run from 2018-23 and has a PHP500 million funding, which will be sourced from the bank’s income.
Students qualified for the RISE scholarship are those taking engineering and real estate management, education, hotel and restaurant management (HRM) and Associate HRM, agriculture and forestry and environmental science, and accountancy.
Borromeo said ensuring that students will be able to go to school and finish their studies is the sure way of helping them succeed in life and help the country as well.
She said, “it’s a pity that we have unemployment at the other side of the equation as a problem, and at the other side of that equation is we don’t have enough skilled professionals to help the country build infrastructure that we need to have in a developing country like ours.”
“Let us us help our young and qualified students so that they will become very productive citizens and help this country become as progressive as our neighbors in the ASEAN region,” she said.
Schools included in the initial implementation of the program are Bulacan State University, Emilio Aguinaldo College Dasmarinas, Cavite; Lyceum of the Philippines University, Cavite; Mindanao State University, Marawi City; Mindanao University of Science and Technology; Misamis University, Our Lady of Triumph Institute of Technology, Palawan State University, Philippine Normal University, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, University of Cebu, University of the Philippines, Los Banos; West Bay College; and West Visayas State University.
In another development, Borromeo also signed an agreement with local government officials of Palawan, led by Governor Jose Alvarez, for the reforestation of about 200-hectare catchment area of Lake Manguao in Taytay, Palawan.
She said the program, which has a budget of PHP6.4 million, targets to save Palawan’s largest freshwater lake by planting high value tree species like apitong, mahogany, ipil and narra.
“It will also promote a habitat conducive to wildlife including species endemic to Palawan,” she added. (Joann Villanueva/PNA)
