Musalon Montil, an elder in the remote B’laan village of Tananzang in southern Philippines, sang his heart out to the people who attended their village assembly that was meant to rally community support for education.
 
The song challenged the youth to finish their studies and encouraged the villagers to work together to improve local education, said B’laan spokesperson Teresita Dolotallas.
 
The B’laans, an indigenous people from southern Mindanao, sing to express their deepest thoughts and feelings--a custom called "Malem." Musalon’s Malem expressed how important education is to his village and how deeply they feel about working together to improve it.
 
“We are communal in nature and do things collectively. We normally consult everyone, including the elders and the young,” Teresita said.
 
That’s why they are inspired to implement the Local Education Report Card (LERC) system that USAID's Education Quality and Access for Learning and Livelihood Skills (EQuALLS2) Project introduced to the village.
 

The LERC lists down the village-identified indicators of education improvement that they want to track, such as the state of education facilities and teaching/learning resources, student/learner achievements and skills, and community support. It gives communities a clear picture of the state of education in their villages at any point in time, helps identify their priority concerns not just for in-school but also for out-of-school youth, and establishes measurable goals for which they can develop actionable plans.
 
Teachers and school heads, parents, and village officials are expected to play major roles in implementing the LERC system. “The LERC helped us realize that we play crucial roles in improving the quality of education in our barangay,” said Gladys Luig from neighboring Antong village that is also implementing the system.
 
The municipal government has committed to establish a LERC database to track the education progress of each participating village.
 
USAID’s EQuALLS2 project will pilot-test the LERC system in other selected project sites.