Service Learning

Over the course of the past 8 months, I have been working on a project that involves a teenager named Jave who is deaf. In 2008, a pastor referred Jave to Helping Hands Healing Hearts Ministries for educational assistance since there wasn’t any SPED school in the province where he came from. Jave needed to study, learn sign language and be loved and protected. He was only seven years old. His mother didn’t know what to do for him as none of them knew sign language and they literally couldn’t communicate with him. The child was so frustrated and his parents didn’t know how to help. Thankfully their pastor knew who could help them. Jave has been taken cared of since then by the Helping Hands Healing Hearts Ministries Philippines Inc., a Non-Government Organization for children in crisis situations. I chanced upon Jave when my dad brought me to HHM for a possible CAS project. We were considering doing a feeding program or free art lessons on weekends and towards the end of our conversations with the Center Head, we were shown a pencil sketch by Jave. One look at the artwork and my dad knew he was gifted. We arranged for a meeting with him the following Saturday and the rest was history. Service Learning >> The Gift of Jave By Dominique A. Joaquin, Grade 12 Brent International School Baguio

As an International Baccalaureate program (IB) diploma candidate, it was necessary for me to initiate a project of my own, something doable and worthwhile. I didn’t want to do something that would end when I graduate from school. Teaching a young gifted lad how to paint made sense to me. I wanted to teach him the skills and leave him with something he could do by himself. Something that may enable him to fend for himself financially in the future, to take care of his needs and probably even help his family. I decided that I would train Jave to paint with watercolor and teach him basic art elements and principles. I wanted to help him develop his gift to fruition. In the Philippines, there are not many institutions to accommodate differently-abled students. If they are lucky enough to end up with an NGO for home and mainstream special education, they are left on their own to figure out what to do with themselves after high school. Tertiary education can be expensive, hence job opportunities are very competitive and harder for differently-abled high school graduates to land. Some find jobs in shopping malls as baking assistants or maintenance crew. These jobs are contractual and hardly ever stable. I wish for something better for Jave. I hope to help him develop his giftedness and eventually, God-willing make a painter, an artist of himself. Art would not only be a hobby for him to while away his time, it would be a way by which he could profit and hopefully support himself for life.

We began our watercolor sessions early in the rainy month of July 2015. Why watercolor? Well, despite the fact that watercolor is not in itself an easy medium, it is a medium that requires “less”. Less means that it requires less paint to create paintings and is therefore less costly. A brush, some water, a piece of paper stretched on a board and he is on! A set of small tubes of paint would last a watercolor painter quite a long time. Watercolor requires training. Which puts me in somewhat of an advantage as I myself had gone through the training during my ninth grade watercolor painting program that Jave Smith with friends from HHM during the Flora VIII opening.

Brent School has been running since 1998. With that year-long training, I was enabled to paint and am quite confident I could transfer what I know to help Jave develop some painting techniques with the medium.

For weeks, I would ride with my dad’s motorcycle every Saturday, rain or shine, to HHM for Jave’s lessons until the foundation decided to bring him over to our house instead. One of the first struggles I faced with teaching Jave was the fact that he was, indeed, deaf. I had never properly learned sign language and in the beginning it was a bit hard to get used to the fact that he could not hear me. Initially, we employed the assistance of one of his friends from HHM to translate between him and myself. Matthew, Jave’s best friend is an “regular” teenager who is able to do sign language, willingly he did the translation for his friend and myself for quite sometime even joining us in the painting sessions for a while. Jave proved to be a fast learner, I was surprised by the pace he progressed. Slowly, we began to converse somewhat through gestures and written notes. My mom would usually prepare snacks or invite him to join us for dinner occasionally. Over meals and painting lessons, Jave was able to teach me the alphabet in sign language and although I’m not good at it, I learned to read his hand signs better since then.

In time, Jave moved on from the drills to actual painting, his emerging mastery of the medium manifested in his initial output. He never ceased to impress me and made me proud of his emerging facility with color-production and rendering. His first painting was a success met with only a bit of bumps along the way. As a challenge, his next painting was one that required more detailed work, steady hands, and a discerning eye for color. The biggest struggle for his second painting was certainly doing the minute details, the veins of the blue orchid that I chose for him to do. But in the end, Jave nailed it anyways. Most times, all I do was point out areas that are missing some details or areas that are in need of blending. At that point, it was clear to me that Jave had become fully capable of painting on his own.

It gives me great pride to announce that his works are currently on display at the Hotel Heritage Mansion as part of the Brent International School Baguio’s grade nine watercolor painting exhibit , Flora VIII. Jave and I are planning to move from flowers to people and paint a person. As the much-awaited February ‘Panagbenga Flower Festival’ of Baguio City ensues, my biggest hope is for his works to find an admirer, a patron who will buy them from the show. I wish for him to experience the last stage of the creative process, that is exhibition and probable sale of an artist’s works. That would mean a lot to him and to me.

Service Learning >> A Scholar’s Journey to Success: Bernice Delos Reyes

Bernice Delos Reyes with kids at a Service Learning Activity

When asked how life changed with the education she received at International School Manila (ISM), Bernice Delos Reyes says “My perspective of the world has changed so much in a sense that I have more empathy and understanding of how the world works.”

Coming from a local Christian School, applying to ISM’s Philippine Scholarship Program was a life changing moment for Bernice. Being accepted to the scholarship enabled her to embark on an adventure without ever having to turn back. For this bright girl, her journey started when she entered eighth grade, and it certainly was just the beginning.

Her life before ISM was simple and she could not have imagined doing all the things that she has been able to do if it were not for the scholarship. From acting in theater to taking part in various service learning projects, she is thankful to ISM for sparking her interests and desires to seek more and do more. Without the education she received, speaking in front of large crowds would have been a terrifying thought, and she would not ever even considered doing summer classes abroad. During the summer of 2014, Bernice was accepted into a program at Yale University called the Yale Young Global Scholars (YYGS) program. As she wrote in her article A Summer in Yale, she described her two-week experience as one that “opened new doors of opportunities for me, allowing me to explore possibilities and newfound interests that I can now build upon to define the kind of person I want to become.”

One of the achievements Bernice is most proud of during her time at ISM is an idea she had for service learning that was brought on by her passion to help people who are in need. During her freshman year, she initiated partnering up with child- based service learning partners like Social Physical Educational Cultural Spiritual - Foundation Inc. (SPECS) to bring children to amusement parks. It started with a trip to Enchanted Kingdom, which evolved each year to other trips like visits to Museo Pambata (Museum for Children) and Manila Ocean Park. Bernice eventually became the President of the Service Learning Council, a position she held since Junior year.

Now in her last year at ISM, Bernice opted for an Early Decision application to college. When she started her Senior year last August 2015, she already knew where she wanted to apply. Her role models, ISM alumnae and scholars, Kimi Rodriguez ’11 and Juliana Saubier ’12 both attended New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), and she wanted the same path for herself.

After weeks of working tirelessly on her essays, application and doing her best during an invitation to Candidate Weekend at NYUAD, all her hard work through the years paid off. Just like waiting for Christmas morning, Bernice could not sleep through the wee hours of December 16, 2015. At 6:00 am, she received an early present from Santa – a full scholarship to NYUAD. This full scholarship includes tuition, room and board, allowance and two flights back to Manila each year, amounting to approximately $290,000 in financial aid, for all four years in college. Without even thinking twice, Bernice accepted, continuing her journey to another new beginning.

From dreaming simple to dreaming big, Bernice is a true testament to how an education at ISM can make you reach more than you can possibly imagine.

By Anna Seipelt Goco International School Manila Deputy Director of Advancement International School Manila Class of 2003