By Ricardo Espitia, PCAFPD Student Affairs
Earlier this year, PCAFPD began providing laptops as part of our scholarship program. This initiative came out of PCAFPD’s efforts to meet the moment and the realities of our scholars who are schooling in a 21st century, COVID environment. Prior to this effort, many scholars were conducting their school work on smart devices, writing essays on phone keyboards, and using crowded internet cafes to accomplish their studies. Currently, all eligible scholars enrolled for the 2022-2023 school year have been offered laptops by PCAFPD, and future batches will receive laptops as part of their onboarding. PCAFPD collaborated with our alumni to ensure the specifications and models were appropriate for the scholars. Special models are given to students in Information Technology related courses, which require specific processing power.
“As a student, it’s been a blessing for me to have the opportunity of being one of the scholars who are eligible for the PCAFPD laptop. In the past, I faced challenges making PowerPoint presentations, video presentations, doing excel, encoding and the like. Most of the time I borrowed laptops from my classmates or teachers or went to the computer shop to make my outputs.”
This initiative was made possible due to our supportive donor community and in large part due to a very generous bequest made from a late batch 1 RPCV, Eleanor Whitlach. The legacy bequest allowed us to procure a large amount of laptops at once for nearly 100 current scholars.
PCAFPD hosted two turnover ceremonies for scholars in the Metro Manila and Negros Oriental area. The rest of the units were sent via courier. On June 12, 2022, a turnover ceremony was held at Jollibee in Pasay City, Metro Manila. The ceremony was attended by Mr. Roland de Jesus, PCAFPD Vice President for Philippine Operations, members of the Ituloy Team, and 15 scholars from batches 2019-2021 who reside in the surrounding area. The local company which sourced the laptop, Vertice Solutions, Inc., was represented by Ms. Lalaine Zulueta, Sales Director, and two personnel.
In their remarks, both Mr. de Jesus and Ms. Zulueta highlighted the goal of the grant which is to provide the scholars a piece of equipment to help them in achieving their degrees. Ms. Zulueta also stressed that Vertice Solutions, Inc. will provide help to the scholars if they need servicing for their laptops.
On Sept. 26, 2022 a laptop turnover ceremony was held at Talipapa Beach Club, Bayawan City, Negros Oriental for Scholars in the Negros Oriental area. The ceremony was hosted by the Negros Cluster and led by Alumni Jeanalyn Estrellado and accompanied by fellow alumni Hector Plame.
The words of our scholars speak for themselves regarding the positive impact of this effort.
“I thank the PCAFPD community and I am blessed to be one of your scholars. Thank you for the laptop you gave me, it is a big help to me as a college student. The course I am taking is Bachelor of Elementary Education and we always make a lesson plan as part of our task as a student. This laptop will help me a lot in my studies. I am very grateful. Thank you very much.”
“I thank the PCAFPD community and I am blessed to be one of your scholars. Thank you for the laptop you gave me, it is a big help to me as a college student. The course I am taking is Bachelor of Elementary Education and we always make a lesson plan as part of our task as a student. This laptop will help me a lot in my studies. I am very grateful. Thank you very much.”
PCAFPD thanks its generous donor community for enabling this effort and for its ongoing support to achieving their educational dreams.