Mapúa MCL: At the Frontlines of Community Service: Community Engagement
The Office for External Relations and Global Linkages (OERGL) and the Center for Service-Learning and Community Engagement (CSCE) collaborated to implement the project titled ‘At the Frontlines of Community Service: Community Engagement’ Series of service-learning and community service activities in the Mapúa MCL’s adopted communities. One of these communities was the Siena College Extension Mission School, Bo. Pasbul, Porac City, Province of Pampanga which was personally visited by the Mapúa MCL in July 2022 – two (2) years after the Covid 10 pandemic and lockdown. An estimated 100 families from the Aeta community participated in the visit with a brief program organized by the OERGL and CSCE that also donated food packs, usable toys for children, and 100 bags of school supplies.
The Siena College Extension Mission School has been a long-time adopted community partner of the Mapúa MCL. The school educates the Aeta children of the community but lacks functional school facilities, including a library and accessible potable water, among others. The community is situated in a far-flung village where the absence of local transportation makes it difficult for the Aeta families to go to the town’s marketplace, hospitals, and other public services.
Another activity took place within the same community as part of Mapúa MCL’s Christmas community engagement in December 2022. An estimated 100 participants from the Mapúa MCL (students, alumni, and faculty members) actively engaged with the members of the Aeta community who received Christmas food packs aside from the lunch meals personally cooked by the Mapúa MCL participants for the Aeta families. The series of activities hoped to deliver essential goods to the indigenous community and the Mapúa MCL hopes to respond to the community’s social issues in the future.