September 13, 2021

The children have been enjoying their last week of freedom before school starts again today; due the continuing pandemic it will be home-schooling again using modules collected from their teacher each week. Right now we will only have one student in elementary school (grade 1) and one little boy in Day-care, which will also be through modular learning.

It is unfortunate that children in the Philippines have been unable to attend face-to-face classes since March of last year and we can only hope that they can return to school and see all their classmates again early next year. The whole school experience is so important for young children, particularly for Day-care where socialization and interacting with a teacher for the first time is an integral part of the learning process.

Only 14% of Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against covid-19 (including all our staff) and the daily rate of new cases continues to rise due to the delta variant (over 20,000 every day). The only positive news is that more vaccines are on the way and the government is still hoping to reach 70% by the end of this year. The vaccination of children aged 12-17 years has also been approved by the government and that should help in getting children back to school.