TACLOBAN CITY- A vocational and technical training building was formally opened in this city which its donors also describing it as a “life skills training facility.”
The two-story building, inaugurated on Wednesday (Sept.13) was donated by the Consuelo Foundation, which is part of its assistance to Tacloban City after it was battered by super typhoon ‘Yolanda’ in 2013, to a local based nongovernment organization, Streetlight Philippines, Inc(SPI).
SPI, run by Neva and her Norwegian husband Erlend Johannesen, deals with street children and out-of-school youths for the past 14 years now in Tacloban City.
The Consuelo Foundation, named after from Consuelo Zobel Alger and founded in 1988, was among the private sectors that extended assistance to Leyte and Samar when Yolanda pummeled Eastern Visayas.
And one of the beneficiaries of this new training center, located in Barangay Tagpuro which is around 13 kms north from the city proper, is Gladys, 22.
Gladys (whose family name is being withheld on request of the SPI) said that she is happy that she is one of the 56 scholar-beneficiaries of the training center.
She is enrolled in automotive, a work mostly associated with males.
“I just find it challenging and from what I heard, one can easily land a job in automotive as it is one of the in demands both here and abroad,” she said.
Gladys is the third in the brood of six siblings. Their father abandoned them WHEN she was just a baby. Her mother is jobless with her grandmother, on mother side, helping them on their daily needs.
She will train at the facility for six months.
Lawyer Carmela Andal-Castro, managing director of the Consuelo Foundation, said that the facility will not only provide their scholars needed technical and vocational skills ‘but skills for life.’
“In the center, will have continuous training skills among young adults and at risk youths, both vocational technical skills, and values which we call skills for life,” Andal-Castro said.
The facility offers automotive, engine repair and maintenance, welding, and refrigerator and air-conditioning repair.
On the aspect of ‘skills for life,’ the scholar-beneficiaries will be taught on value formation, work ethic, adolescent reformation, health, conflict resolution, leadership and civic engagement.
“We want to equip them with both soft skills and the technical skills to succeed and bring their respective communities and families on higher grounds,” she added.
Norwegian Ambassador Erik Forner, who graced the opening of the facility, expressed his ‘amazement’ to both SPI and Consuelo Foundation for coming up with the facility.
“We’re happy that both Consuelo Foundation has partnered with the Streetlight Philippine Inc. where they can even help more children out of the harms of the streets in Tacloban,” Forner said. (JOEY A. GABIETA/ROEL T. AMAZONA)