Eastern Visayas Technology Education Center

EVACE wants to help the people of the region raise themselves out of poverty through education.  Despite being eager to learn skills that will help them succeed in the modern world, the children of Pilar have had virtually no access to computers and the opportunities they offer. EVACE established the Eastern Visayas Technology Education Center (EVTEC) as a proctored, self-paced, web-based facility. Students participate in interactive on-line English language programs, bring their math skills up to grade level, and progress from basic keyboarding to website design and computer programming. Oliver Dahl, Executive Director of EVACE International, recently spent a week on the island introducing students to a curriculum in programming, including HTML, JavaScript and jQuery. Eventually they will have the opportunity to participate in internships available through technology companies run by supporters of EVACE Pilar.

Besides learning these necessary skills, students will be able to apply to college, find scholarships, seek employment, or join the rapidly growing IT industry in the Philippines. With your help and that of EVTEC, the children of Pilar will catch up with their peers in better developed countries and break the cycle of  subsistence living.

INNOVATIVE NEW FACILITY:EVTEC is housed in a modified used shipping container! Security is excellent thanks to steel door closure, and the deeply anchored container can weather the typhoons that regularly hit the Philippines. Soon a solar panel system will allow independence from the unreliable electric grid. The speed and efficiency of this installation was abetted by first experimenting with a prototype design built on the other side of the world in Staunton, VA, allowing issues to be worked out ahead of time. This prototype will be put into use closer to the US east coast, but it can be replicated anywhere in the world.

Most of our 20 computers are utilized during the multiple weekly proctored sessions, and soon the facility will be available a few hours each day for students to work on school work, take online college and technical courses, and apply for jobs and internships.

RENEWABLE SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Besides classroom instruction, the facility will be run by volunteers in off hours for self-paced individual pursuit of online education. This keeps costs down while keeping productivity up. We also have our very own IT expert in Chip Nuttall. Chip started doing computer consulting within the medical community in 1989 and his second love has been IT technology ever since. He has built computers, repaired them, selected hardware and software, and even taught classes to small groups for many years.  The long term goal is a renewable self-sufficiency as students gain enough experience to help run classes and to earn money for the center’s maintenance by doing contractual programming for companies on larger islands or anywhere in the world.

Happily, our program will have a multiplier effect on the well-being of the island’s inhabitants. In the short term, we hired locally for the construction of the school. In the long run, the students, after educational and work experience in the outside world, will bring investment, industry and innovation back to the island. The new industry and development on the island will create better jobs for current generations and a brighter future for the younger ones.

In our more developed societies, we take for granted the privilege of access to computers and the internet. These tools give us endless opportunities and advantages which few people on Ponson Island can even imagine.  Currently, the children of Pilar cannot even dream about what they “want to be when they grow up” because they see only the traditional path of poorly rewarded menial labor. Let’s break this mentality by giving them the tools to be anything that they can dream.