Sikat

Sikat is a UK registered charity, number 1123801, based in London. The word “sikat” comes from the Filipino Tagalog language and can translate into English as the “rising of the sun, moon and stars.” SIKAT is an acronym for “Sa Ikauunlad ng Kabataan at Tagumpay” which can be translated into English as “Helping children to develop.”
Works
The charity's stated aim is to improve access to education for children and young adults in impoverished rural districts of the Republic of the Philippines.<ref name=CC/> It is currently helping children who attend the Calingag Extension of Nabuslot National High School, which is found in the municipality of Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro.
In the UK, Sikat has three main roles: raising funds to support its activities in the Philippines;<ref name=CC/> organising the collection and shipment to the Philippines of donated items for use by the students; and raising awareness in the UK of the parlous state of secondary education provision by the government in rural parts of the Philippines.
In the Philippines, Sikat helps to provide students from disadvantaged families with educational resources such as books and has plans to improve facilities at the extension school. Sikat states its eventual aim as being to move beyond Calingag to help children in other disadvantaged communities improve their access to secondary education.
History
Sikat was founded in 2006 by Linda Manlises to support the provision of secondary education in the Calingag Extension School during a visit to the school in its first year. Linda is a native of the barangay or district of Calingag and the decision to help was partly influenced by the difficulties in going to school she experienced as a child from an impoverished family.
At the time Sikat was founded, the school comprised only one temporary, open-walled classroom erected from bamboo and coconut leaves and suffered shortages in all areas of basic equipment, from electricity to chairs and text books. Sikat's initial project was to collect donated items, particularly books and films in English, that could be used to supplement the limited resources available at the school and arrange for their shipment to the school. In 2008 Sikat was able to open a makeshift library, which attracts up to 100 children a day, housed in a former rice warehouse and organise local volunteers to act as librarians. This progress meant that in 2008 Sikat was granted recognition as a charity in the UK and registered with the Charity Commission.<ref name=CC/>
Since becoming a registered charity, Sikat has defined more ambitious goals for itself. Initially it plans to improve the education available at the Calingag school. It aims to provide the school with enough professionally designed classrooms to comfortably accommodate the 200 and more children now enrolled in classes of around 25 each, and provide ancillary rooms for science and IT lessons. It also wants to improve student welfare with lavatories, a canteen, a staff room and sports facilities.
Sikat has also identified access to post-secondary education as an issue for children from Calingag. It is considering steps to organise sponsorship of the brightest students from Calingag to go to college and university and has also stated an intention to help provide post-secondary school vocational training for school-leavers.
Other areas that Sikat aspires to help the Calingag community are in the provision of vocational training for graduates of the secondary school, early learning facilities for the under 7's who are waiting to go to primary school, making tutoring available to children with physical or mental disabilities who are unable to attend the school and improving access to education for the children of the large native Mangyan population in the province of Oriental Mindoro.
The charity's ultimate aim is to use the experience it gains in Calingag to help children in similar disadvantaged communities in the Philippines gain access to meaningful education.
The Calingag Extension School
The Calingag Extension School was founded in 2005 on 10,000 square metres of land donated by the Manlises family. The first classroom was erected by the villagers using an open lattice of bamboo for the walls and coconut leaves for the roof.
Teachers are provided by the government and the school operates as an extension school of Nabuslot National High School, located in the nearest town. The school aims to teach the full Filipino high-school syllabus: Filipino, English, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Araling Panlipunan (social science and history), MAPEH (music, arts, physical education and health), technology and home economics and Values.
Learning at the school is hampered by large class-sizes and a general lack of books and equipment. The 2009-10 teachers' programme drew attention to an acute lack of books for English years 3 and 4, Maths, Science, MAHPEH, TLE and Values in all years (just 1 or 2 books available). Only English years 1 and 2 and Filipino years 1 to 3 had more than 10 books available and only English 1 and 2 had enough books for every pupil to have one.
The school's first intake was 65 pupils from the Calingag area, which then rose every year to 214 for the 2009-10 school year.
The first makeshift classroom has been supplemented by an ad-hoc collection of three more classrooms, dispersed around the school site, donated by local businesses.
The makeshift classroom remains, but the coconut-leaf roof which used to harbour snakes has been replaced by one of corrugated iron which, although snake-proof, makes conditions uncomfortably hot for the students in the dry season and noisy when it rains.

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