TESDA IS THE ANSWER

Jobless, Hopeless, a Nobody Turned World Class
A true-to-life story of Nasroden M. Alawi
Marawi City, June 18, 2009

I was then a scholar in a State University taking post-graduate studies to pursue a dream for a career profession in teaching when in the final phase of enrolling a thesis requirement everything has stopped as taking the subject will cost me multiple times higher than what I could afford. That was in 2002 and the cost gets higher by the year against the earning that is getting lower instead. The stumbling block has reduced me into a hopeless loser, a jobless nobody, an added burden to a destitute family. The huge investment in time and money for a dreamed career went down the drain for a fraction of shortfall I couldn’t accept happening. Seven years has dragged my life meaningless and I’m coming out of age until TESDA happens.

The Scholarship grant for a half-year course of Massage Therapy I benefited from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority has changed the whole world in me from being a frustrated professional into a happy career-provider of a world-class standard. It was a brilliant way of fast-tracking a dream profession exclusive from TESDA and never-known to so many people like me who happens to be constricted to the old confines of formal education.

I have then heard of TESDA hence the word is a common talk but I never realized the magic that brings hope and success to so many people in this poor country. I started witnessing that fact late last year when I entered the so-called “world of Tech-Voc” in the Cali Paramedical College, a training provider referred to by the TESDA provincial office who granted my scholarship application. I’m taking the course as my second option and a sort of buying time while in the waiting for opportunity. But the thought has changed the very first day of orientation which is an induction program taking place prior the training.

The whole-day process involving some 60 Scholars was a unique experience and a real barrier-breaking in the learning environment especially in the channels of communication. Anybody participating would not think of the school as mere requirement and a domain ruled by boring teachers feeding knowledge and deciding fate. The Cali School is an equitable teaching-learning community in a competitive harmony of teachers and learners with diverse potentialities sharing knowledge and skills among each other. I was overwhelmed by the spontaneous dynamics seem so free and not structured. There and then I feel in me a career coming to life.

4 MONTHS IN THE MAKING

The course I’m having is funded for six (6) months through the Pangulong Gloria Scholarship Program in the TESDA. It cos….