BINHI means “seed” in Filipino. True to its name, BINHI Foundation aims to inculcate seeds of education among marginalized Filipino children that will grow and bear fruits of empowerment and self-confidence. The foundatioin believes literacy can inspire the youth to dream big—as big as aspiring to become the country’s President whose one of the few qualifications is having the ability to read and write, and rise above their economic status.
Founded in 2008, BINHI launched with an English literacy program crafted and designed by volunteers who aimed to teach reading, writing, and comprehension skills to pupils whose performance are below the academic benchmarks.
The no-profit non-government foundation was inspired Pratham, an innovative learning organization created to improve the quality of education in India. BINHI’s vision—to keep every Filipino child in school and learning well, drives BINHI to keep going and grow the number of BINHI scholars who they envision to lead tomorrow, as today they learn to read.
BINHI scholars who attended the 24-week DepEd accredited English literacy program significantly improved their knowledge on the English language. Carefully selected scholars entered the Program without skills like recognition of alphabets and their sounds, reading 3-letter words, and understanding short stories and narratives. At the end of the Program, children were converted to as much as learning the ability to independently read and understand storybooks.
Core Beliefs: They believe that every child is unique and has different abilities, needs and learning styles. Therefore, they train teachers to use different approaches to teaching and they provide interactive activities to foster participation in class. They also believe that students learn best in a caring and supportive environment.
Their Vision: “Every Filipino child in school and learning well.”
Their Mission: BINHI aims to provide English learning support to children in marginalized areas by creating and providing learning kits inspired by proven teaching methodologies, recruiting and teaching community-based volunteers as assistant teachers, and training public school teachers to effectively implement the Program’s curriculum.
Their learning kits include everything needed for the success of the literacy program—the teacher’s manual, instructional audio-visual support for the instructor, all the teaching materials like flash cards, toys, lesson books, and story books, and student evaluation tools.
They train teachers to instill the love of learning among BINHI scholars so they develop the self-motivation to stay in school. BINHI accomplishes this by creating a learning environment that builds the child’s self-confidence.
