Liga Eskwela gives hope to Marawi kids

By Jack Biantan,
Contributor

Marawi Physical Education for School Sports (PESS) supervisor Hedjarah Taratingan’s family was among the victims in the Marawi City siege in 2017.

She lost her house in ground zero and most of their belongings were destroyed during the fighting between the government forces and the terrorists.

Now her family has been relocated and slowly rebuilding their lives. She was a witness to the sufferings of the people of Marawi, specially the children.

So the Department of Education Marawi Division office led by Schools Division Superintendent OIC Pharida Sansarona and Hedjarah Taratingan’s did not waste time to help lessen the trauma to the children by asking the Thomas V. Moran Foundation to extend its Futsal Liga Eskwela program to their devastated city.

As the PESS chief of the city, Taratingan is responsible for supervising the sports activities of the DepEd in Marawi. Definitely because of her job she loves sports and futsal and football have a special place in her heart.

“Futsal is a good sport. It is a combination of many sport using the feet. Basketball because it is played in a basketball court and football because only the feet are used,’ she said.

Now enter the Thomas V. Moran Foundation of former Philippine men’s national team member Danny Moran and Gawad Kalinga.

According to Danny Moran, who is the CEO of the Moran Foundation they introduced the Liga Eskwela Futsal program to 11 public schools in Metro Manila in 2015.

By 2016 the Liga Eskwela expanded to 65 public schools and by 2017 the Department of Education took notice of the project and gave its blessing and encouraged all public schools in the NCR which resulted into a massive success as 300 public schools joined.

He added that this year, DepEd invited them to present their Liga Eskwela Futsal Program to all other DepEd regional Sports heads in a conference held in Palawan.