True to our commitment “it’s all about people”, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of OSM is making a positive impact to indigent communities. Ever since the community projects were institutionalized through the OSM-AD Foundation, we have further strengthened the direction of our advocacy to help improve lives.
We promote access to quality education to indigent youth in the Philippines. Through our Education and Scholarship Program (ESP), we offer college scholarship to the youth from poor families and deserving beneficiaries of OSM seafarers and land-based staff. The program also facilitates annual leadership and learning summit to further provide learning opportunities to our scholars. Through ESP, we hope that the OSM Scholars would soon help cut the cycle of poverty in their family and eventually make notable contribution to their local community.
We also contribute to the improvement of basic education in disadvantaged communities through our Initiatives for Social Development (ISD) program. Through the ISD, we enhance the capability of schools to deliver quality education through improvement of school facilities and seminars for teachers. We also encourage the children to pursue education by providing sufficient school supplies and implementation of educational workshops.
More so, our Foundation is on vigilance to respond to indigent communities affected by calamities within the country through our Disaster Response Program (DRP). We facilitate relief operations to effectively deliver our projects, we presently have more than 50 active volunteers in the pool. The volunteers were given an orientation by top caliber development workers to ensure effectiveness of volunteer teams working on field.
With 49.4% of families deprived of basic education based on 2018 report of Philippine Statistics Authority, in response to the country’s pressing situation in education, the OSM-ADF aims to contribute to upliftment and access to quality education of the children and youth. The educational programs are designed to make significant impact to communities.
Prior to each project implementation, the Foundation conducts thorough research to study the gap of the target school or community to support the planned intervention on specific education-related issues. The Foundation selects communities that are preferably has 30% and above poverty incidence. Our OSM volunteers, in coordination with local partners, are being sent on geographically isolated communities to do research and ocular visit for first-hand assessment. This supports the intention of the Foundation to organize projects based on needs.