KASIBU, Nueva Vizcaya—Asia-Pacific miner OceanaGold on Friday turned over a new school building with 16 classrooms and two laboratories to the Eastern Nueva Vizcaya National High School of the Department of Education here.
The senior high school facility in Barangay Didipio marks an era where students in this district would face what observers noted as a “reversal of fate.”
High school students in Didipio used to walk 44 kilometers weekly to attend classes at the Malabing Valley National High School in Barangay Wangal.
Today, students entering senior high school from nearby villages and towns may study at the ENVNHS to finish the K-12 program.
Apart from the P43-million building cost, the company donated another P10 million for laboratory equipment and other educational materials, of which P7 million in equipment and materials went to the ENVNHS and P3 million to other high schools in Nueva Vizcaya and Quirino.
“If a high school like this was present during my time, I could have been a professional today,” said Didipio village councilor Henry Guay, as he opened the inauguration ceremony.
“I could be walking tall today despite my severe deficiency in height,” he jested, eliciting thunderous laughter from the crowd.
With the completion of the three-story building, the ENVNHS is the best-equipped DepEd campus in the district in terms of classroom, laboratory and equipment so far.
The building was wholly funded by the “We Care” program of OceanaGold Philippines Inc., the embodiment of its corporate social responsibility or CSR.
The building donated by OGPI would augment three smaller buildings accommodating about 400 students. The school is now ready to accommodate 800 more students at 50 students to one classroom ratio.
“It was a community investment program that was aligned with the needs, values and priorities of our community,” said David Way, the general manager of OGPI’s Didipio Operations.
When OceanaGold’s predecessor company discovered a large deposit of gold and copper in Didipio, those who endorsed the mining project asked for the establishment of a high school building as one of the preconditions in giving their consent.
“Just like any other parent, our dream for our children is for them to have a good education,” barangay captain Alfredo Pugong Jr. said.
“We gambled our future when we gave our consent to allow the mine to operate. But what choices do we have? This village could never have a school like this have we listened to the detractors,” Guay explained.
Community relations workers of a mining company during the exploration period helped Didipio locals establish the two-classroom Green Valley Institute in the early ‘90s.
Due to financial difficulty, the school was eventually converted to a public high school named Eastern Nueva Vizcaya National High School, by virtue of Republic Act No. 10221 authored by then-Rep. Carlos M. Padilla during the 15th Congress.
Padilla, now the governor of Nueva Vizcaya, has been critical of the operation of the Didipio mine. Vice Gov. Lambert Galima represented him in the inauguration ceremony.
“Development projects should always open the way for a partnership,” Galima said in his speech.
OGPI takes pride in investing millions of pesos in roads, irrigation, public buildings, support to cooperatives, and livelihood projects around the Didipio mine. “Structures are not our greatest legacies. Our greatest legacy will be the lives we have touched, your lives,” Way said in his speech.