WELLNESS IN EDUCATION: DepEd will provide tuition subsidy to over 350,000 incoming Grade 7 students who wish to continue their secondary education in private schools this school year. Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the number of slots for the DepEd’s Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE) program has increased from 257,365 in school year 2013-2014 to 352,328 this school year. The GASTPE program, which is being provided through an Education Service Contracting (ESC) scheme, is one of the government’s strategies to decongest public secondary schools. The ESC grants cover four years of junior high school, from Grades 7 to 10. The amount of subsidy for Grade 7 students in regions outside the National Capital Region (NCR) is P6,500 per grantee for an entire school year subject to adjustments approved by the State Assistance Council (SAC). For Grade 8 to 9 ESC grantees, they will receive P6,500 and for Grade 10, the amount of subsidy is P5,500 per student. Headlines ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 For student grantees in the NCR, the subsidy is P10,000 per school year. “The higher subsidy is in recognition of the fact that private school tuition and all other fees are much higher in NCR than in the rest of the country,” Luistro said. Meanwhile, the grant for incoming Grade 7 under the DepEd’s Open High School Program, including in NCR, shall be an all-in P6,500 per grantee. “In an effort to expedite the decongestion of public secondary schools and subsequently improve their learning environment, ESC shall be expanded to the Open High School Program,” Luistro said. The program also provides salary subsidy to licensed secondary teachers in participating private secondary schools. Section 14 of Republic Act 8545, or the Teachers’ Salary Subsidy Fund, mandates DepEd to earmark a portion of its GASTPE appropriations to finance the salary subsidy for teachers in participating private secondary schools.

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GLOBAL PINOY: Filipino conservationist wins prize for 'rebranding' world's rarest crocodile Marites Gatan Balbas has won a Whitley award for her work involving local communities in the protection of the 'misunderstood' Philippine crocodile. Saving the world's rarest crocodile has been as much about overcoming its image problem as more traditional conservation efforts. Traditional stories depicted the Philippine crocodile as a large man-eater, farmers saw them as pests and the animal is frequently used as a symbol to represent corrupt politicians. But in reality, she explains, the species is relatively small, shy and friendly and does not attacked unless provoked. It is her work to change this image through community initiatives that has seen Gatan Balbas recognised with a Whitley Fund for Nature award and helped to bring the Philippine crocodile (Crocodylus mindorensis) back from the brink of extinction.

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WELLNESS IN TOURISM: Local players in the travel industry have committed to protect the environment and preserve the nation’s cultural heritage in promoting tourism. The commitments are part of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism drawn up by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). During the weeklong UNWTO International Conference on Tourism and Climate Change here, UNWTO secretary-general Taleb Rifai lauded the Department of Tourism (DOT) for pushing the promotion of this initiative. Fourteen tourism-related establishments signed on to the code for the first time. The Philippines is the second country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, next to Indonesia, to have adhered to the code. Adopted in 1999, the code has only about 200 countries around the world as signatories, mostly from Europe and Latin America. With international tourism forecast to reach 1.6 billion arrivals by 2020, UNWTO members believe that the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism is needed to help minimize the negative impacts of tourism on the environment and on cultural heritage, while maximizing the benefits for residents of tourism destinations. Headlines ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1 Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. has said their vision is for all Philippine tourism companies to commit to this program in the near future.

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WELLNESS IN BUSINESS: Philippine economy will more than double in the next decade as earnings from overseas workers and business outsourcing surge, a respected US-based think-tank said Monday. Once the region’s perennial economic laggard, the Southeast Asian country is poised to stage a major comeback to be one of the top three economies in the region by 2030, forecast Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist for IHS. “(The) Philippines economy has undergone a remarkable transition from a pussycat into a tiger economy over the last decade,” he said in a statement issued ahead of the holding of the World Economic Forum on East Asia meeting in Manila this week. “The Philippine economy has the capacity for robust long-term economic growth of around 4.5 percent to 5.0 percent per year over the 2016 to 2030 time horizon,” the report said. The economy will grow from its present level of about $280 billion to $680 billion by 2024, “with a projected GDP of $1.2 trillion by 2030,” it added.

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