Last Saturday, April 12, I met with Dr. Emile Gozali at UCC Coffee Café - Burgos Circle (Forbes Town Center, Taguig City, 1634, Metro Manila).
He is a visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Global Asia Institute, National University of Singapore. Prior to that he was a Principle Budget and Management Services Specialist at the Asia Development Bank. At present he is the Principal Evaluation Specialist at Asian Development Bank. He holds a Ph.D. in Developmental Economics from Cornell University (http://asiadialogue.org/experts/emile-gozali/).
The afternoon encounter was a fruitful exchange to better address the needs of improving the quality of basic education of public schools nationwide.
Through CheckMySchool (CMS), a citizen-led ongoing social audit project endorsed by Department of Education (DepEd), we will start with three cities, Quezon, Caloocan and Taguig through a people-participation initiatives to work hand in hand with both national and local government units (LGU's) and/or Local School Boards (LSBs).
This community ownership drive (CO Drive) or check-a-school program (CAS Program) initially in three identified cities will be needing both its commitment and support (monetary and in-kind) to ensure sustainability and independence.
The community is both a local based community-funding and a community-effort influencing managerial planning and attaining effective education in its implementation. That same community having direct influence on our LGUs and LSBs is the beneficiary from the improvements in our public school system.
The next step is to identify CMS's representative/s to start introducing the said engagement to the LGUs and/or LSBs representative/s of the three identified cities.
While initial local funding is now under way, this will call for another meeting/s to plan on how this can be turned into reality.
