Volume 35 No. 1 | Autumn 2025 4 Society Matters Education program helps form young people to become ‘enablers’ in their community The SVD in the Philippines is helping to empower Indigenous Mangyan communities in the province of Occidental Mindoro by providing education and formation for youth to equip them for a stronger future. “The Mangyan Education Center (MEC) program intends to develop the Mangyan youth scholars so they can reach their full potential, equipping them with knowledge, skills, and with the dignity of their heritage, to become leaders in the future,” said Br Willy Vincent Iopam SVD, who is Director of Community Extension Services at the MEC. Br Willy said the program comprises activities responding to five pillars of formation – academics; cultural/ community; spiritual’ moral-psycho-emotional; and livelihood and self-reliance. The MEC says its goals of formation hope to help every scholar to be a person rooted in his or her historical origin, open to the constant changes of the times, yet consciously embracing and promoting the richness of their cultural identity. Since it began in 2017, the program has produced licensed teachers and other graduates who are now enablers in their respective communities. “This has been an inspiration for other Mangyan children to strive for higher education, and for the organisation to continue this formation program,” Br Willy said. In the 2024-25 academic year, the MEC is accommodating 25 Mangyan students for vocational and college courses. The MEC operates under the supervision of Divine Word College of San Jose, a premier Catholic institution in Occidental Mindoro. “Embracing the core values of cultural preservation, dignity, and service, MEC envisions itself becoming a sustainable model community in Occidental Mindoro,” Br Willy said. The project had its beginnings in the late 1980s as a response by SVD missionaries to the request of the Mangyan elders at that time to help them send their children to school, as they saw that education was the key to ending the oppression and discrimination they were experiencing from the lowlanders.
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