Manila, Feb. 6 (CNA) A Taiwanese non-profit organization is working to provide clean drinking water to students on the Philippine island of Siargao, in the wake of a deadly typhoon that damaged the infrastructure in parts of the country last year.

The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families (TFCF), which has a branch in the Philippines, had inaugurated a solar-powered water pumping station in Siargao only days before Super Typhoon Rai ripped through the southern Philippines on Dec. 16, 2021, leaving a trail of death and damage.

Some 405 people were killed, 1,147 injured, and 82 remained missing, while 500,000 were displaced and a total of 4.45 million were adversely affected in some way by the storm, according to the Philippine disaster management agency’s data valid as of Dec. 31, 2021.

Siargao Island, a popular tourist destination known for its sandy beaches and surfing attractions, was reduced to a tangle of downed power lines and poles, smashed buildings, and toppled palm trees.

The solar-powered water pumping station, built by TFCF to supply clean drinking water to underprivileged families, was damaged, rendering it non-functional in the wake of the storm.

Immediately after the typhoon, TFCF moved quickly to assist with emergency relief supplies for the Siargao communities, and it is now working to repair the water pumping station, according to Kelly Chang (張凱莉), a representative at the TFCF Philippine Branch Office.

Students have had to buy drinking water at school, because despite the ample rainfall on the island, there were no adequate collection or storage systems before the TFCF facility was built, she said.

The repairs on the pumping station will be carried out in collaboration with another non-profit organization called Espoir School of Life, to ensure that Siargao students from underprivileged families will again have access to clean water, Chang said.

Espoir School of Life, which provides free education to underprivileged children in the Philippines, opened its first establishment in Siargao in 2016 in the town of Del Carmen, the school’s website says, noting that Espoir is a French word meaning “hope.”

Most of the residents in the area are construction workers, farmers, and fishermen, who earn barely enough to support themselves and their families, and they see no way out of poverty because they think there are no opportunities for people in remote areas of the country, according to the school’s administrator Jerlyn Rabaca.

Espoir School of Life, however, is aiming to end that cycle of poverty by providing “free high-quality education” to students in the area, Rabaca told CNA.

“Everything is free here, including school uniforms and supplies, even crayons and pencils, because we believe we must provide these children with free education and options in life so that they can acquire knowledge to make the right choices,” she said.

Currently, the school has 96 students, in classes from kindergarten to fourth-grade level, but expansion plans are in the pipeline, Rabaca said.

“We’re hoping to add a new class each year, until we reach 12th grade,” she said. “We hope that by then, we’ll be able to prepare the students to apply for university scholarships, because that’s the only way they’ll be able to attain higher education.”

The TFCF Philippine Branch Office is also part of the effort to wipe out urban poverty and create a better life for Siargao students, focusing not just on providing clean drinking water.

In 2020, TFCF introduced a program that allowed the shared use of tablet computers by students in Siargao, after schools there switched to remote learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Chang.

On the island, where internet connectivity is limited, students were able to collect the tablets every day and pass them on to others, sharing the use, to ensure that they could all participate in the remote classes, she said.

(By Angie Chen and Evelyn Kao)

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