URGENT PROJECT
The Familia Sauza-Berenguer de Marquina does not forget our ethnic ancestries. Our Otomi Mexican-Indian ancestries originated from Jalisco, Mexico, the home of our Sauza ancestors. We are proud and grateful of our Otomi Mexican-Indian ancestries.
In the Philippines, Doña Ysabel Berenguer de Marquina-Sauza y Sumulong (1790-1900), our Grand Matriarch and the wife of Don Santiago Sauza y Delos Rios (1777-1880), our Grand Patriarch from Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico was a Dumagat by her maternal Sumulong ancestry. The Dumagats are one of the Philippine natives who reside in eastern, central and southern parts of the island of Luzon.
Because of our indigenous roots, we have a soft spot in our hearts in caring for our fellow indigenous peoples. We put forward to you about the present situation of one of the indigenous peoples in the Philippines, the Cordillerans or in generic, the Igorots. We believe you can be of big help.
Mapita is a breathtaking sitio located on the top of the highest mountains of Barangay Laoag, of Aguilar, a third class municipality of the province of Pangasinan, a northwestern province of the Republic of the Philippines. Mapita is a community of mixed Cordillerans or Igorots, one of the ethnic groups of the country. The Cordillerans of Mapita are Ibalois, Kankanaeys and Bontocs who are all depending on farming in the highlands.
Since the formation of Mapita in 1960s, there is only one elementary school functioning up to this day and no electricity from the town central has reached the place except for the few recently installed solar energy. Only few can provide seasonal generators to produce electricity at night. This elementary school is called Mapita Elementary School. Since then, there is no public high school or even a private school located in Mapita.
The nearest public high school and private school from Mapita is almost 20 kilometers down from the mountain tops passing through a crooked mountain way that is a partly cemented road! It would be a 5 to 6 hours fast walk to reach the nearest private high school! The students of Mapita after graduating from elementary either help their parents in farming or go to high school. Only few were able to finish high school because many students from Mapita went back to Mapita either in their teenage pregnancy, culture shock from the lowland and preferred to work as a farmer. This kind of set up is still going on in Mapita.
The Mapita students and out-of-school youth are intelligent, talented and most of all willing to study, but their parents are financially hard up in providing the needed daily allowances of them such as food and transportation plus the sojourn or room for rent of their stay in the lowland. The only income of Mapita is a seasonal occupation called farming.
Through the help of the benefactors, we can also provide additional income generating projects including that for the development of their good natured place as remarkable and great potential haven of mountain tourism both for local and international tourists. These additional income generating projects for them would mean to augment their earning to help as well the continuity of the high school education in their place.
To support and to help these indigenous children and youth to go to and to finish high school not away from their mountainous home, please help us build an indigenous high school for them and for the development and honing of their skills. We are now raising funds to build classrooms of the first indigenous high school and other school rooms with education and office materials, funds to develop the school grounds and funds to initiate the projected 2-year wage source for school teachers and personnel.
We welcome any individual, corporation, group or even NGO to help us build this first indigenous high school that we target to open for Grade 7 and Grade 8 in 2014. We also welcome in kind donations such as educational materials, science laboratory apparatus, sports equipment and other materials needed to build this school. We also welcome volunteer builders of this school. You can be our partner. Rest assured that your donation will be given to the school and its beneficiaries. Partner With Us Now! Helping these children and youth of Mapita to earn a quality education that they deserve will surely and dramatically change the world through you. Who knows through your help, you will help the world in producing the best servant leaders of the future. (Below are the pictures of Mapita and the children who await your help.)
