4 teachers return home to serve poor communities in South Cotabato

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September 12, 2026 | 5:12pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Four women who became teachers as scholars of a private firm have returned to their isolated hometown to work in a school where so many children from poor families are enrolled, not in progressive areas where life for them could be convenient.

Angelee Tediong, Renalis Amisola-Ingaslo, Judy Ann Yatan and Florence Florito, who finished college education courses as scholars of the Sagittarius Mines Inc., are now teachers in the Danlag Elementary School in the upland Tampakan town in South Cotabato province.

Pupils of the school where they now work, located at one spot in the virtually still underdeveloped Barangay Danlag in Tampakan, are from marginalized ethnic Blaan and non-indigenous settler communities.

Traditional community leaders and local executives separately took turns thanking the four of them on Saturday, September 12, for their having declined offers of teaching positions in booming towns in South Cotabato and in its capital, Koronadal City, for their exceptional manifestation of the four teachers' love for Tampakan, a Blaan tribal domain.

Radio reports on Saturday in Central Mindanao quoted local executives in the region as saying that the examples of the four teachers, whose parents could not afford the cost of their college schooling in institutions far from Tampakan and, thus, finished teaching courses as SMI scholars, are exceptional.

Florito said she and her co-teachers Tediong, Ingaslo and Yatan have a commitment to help school children in Barangay Danlag become professionals in support of efforts of municipal and barangay officials in Tampakan to foster socio-economic development in the municipality.

Florito said the four of them are thankful to Sagittarius Mines Inc., most known as SMI in Tampakan and in other areas in South Cotabato, for having supported their college education via its scholarship program under its Social Development and Management Program.

“To show gratitude to our schooling benefactor and as a special missionary effort, we returned to our hometown to teach school children that we want to finish high school and college too,” Florito said

The SMI’s college scholarship program has produced a total of 1,002 professionals since its inception more than a decade ago.

Two provincial governors in Region 12, Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. of South Cotabato and Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza of Cotabato, separately lauded the four teachers on Saturday.

Tamayo, chairperson of the Regional Peace and Order Council 12, said he is grateful to the SMI for its unrelenting humanitarian programs, including health, livelihood and social service initiatives in Tampakan and in towns around as part of its corporate social responsibility thrusts.

Yatan said it is, for her and her co-teachers Florito, Tediong and Ingaslo, an obligation, having become teachers as scholars of SMI, to return to Tampakan and serve as educators of learners whose Blaan and non-Blaan parents earn just enough from farming, as laborers in farms, construction workers, tricycle drivers and as fruit and vegetable vendors in the markets.