SIRAWAI, Zamboanga del Norte, Philippines – The delivery of basic education in Western Mindanao – also called the Zamboanga Peninsula – and other regions of the country is expectedly an innate concern of the Department of Education (DepEd).

But the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has apparently taken cognizance of the DepEd’s enormous responsibility in Western Mindanao owing to the presence of many far-flung communities, mostly inhabited by Muslims and members of the Indigenous Peoples – like the Subanons and Samals, which have no existing public elementary schools

It is in this regard that several military units, headed by civic-conscious officers and deployed in various rural areas of Western Mindanao, strengthened their Army Literacy Patrol System (ALPS), and fielded soldiers who are mostly graduates of or have completed some units of education courses to serve as teachers, and provide basic literacy education to out-of-school children and young adults who, due to far distance of their homes from public learning centers, have never entered a classroom in their lifetime.

One such AFP field unit is the Army’s 44th Infantry Battalion (44th IB), headed by Lt. Col Alex Rillera, based in this remote Muslim-populated Zamboanga del Norte coastal town.

Rillera – an Ilocano from Naguilian, La Union, whose father Col. Alfeo Rillera was a former Army Brigade commander based in Basilan – said the six-month literacy course is largely focused on Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic – or the so-called Three R’s – and livelihood skills integrated with health and sanitation activities to enable the learners become more useful, more productive and more law-abiding citizens of their community.

He explained that soldiers, as major part of their civil-military operations, have to undertake not only actual field combat activities but also worthwhile humanitarian endeavors such as the ALPS in the wake of growing problem of illiteracy and ignorance among less fortunate Filipinos living in far-flung mountain and coastal communities without public schools in the Southern Philippines.

Among the remote areas the 44th IB recently completed its ALPS program, Rillera said, included the villages of Catuyaan and Bituan in this town, Santo Niño and Puliran in Sibuco, Santa Maria in Siocon, and New Salvacion in Labason, producing close to 500 learner-graduates.

According to Rillera, all the ALPS finishers were given by the 44th IB free ALPS T-Shirts and assorted foodstuff such as rice, canned goods, and noodles – including bath and laundry soaps – as a reward for their effort in turning themselves into functionally literate villagers.

The Ilocano Army officer expressed confidence that with their knowledge in basic literacy education and livelihood skills, the ALPS-trained rural inhabitants would be able to strongly contribute to the maintenance of peace and order in their respective communities, which reportedly are usually visited and disturbed by armed lawless elements.

Rillera pledged to continue the military’s ALPS program until all remote school-less villages and sitios under his unit’s area of responsibility will have been fully served, even as he thanked all municipal and village leaders in Zamboanga del Norte in assisting the soldier-teachers in their mission to spread basic literacy among local no-read-no-write residents.

Other Army field units have also reportedly implemented the ALPS in their respective areas of responsibility in the Zamboanga Peninsula, which is composed of the provinces of Zamboanga del Norte, Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga del Sur, and the component cities of Pagadian, Dipolog, Dapitan, and Zamboanga.