Pinoy's Making a Mark in Australia - Living in the Philippines and Australia

Here are a few of those successes

Many Filipino nationals move to Australia for work and study and sometimes this is overlooked when talking about spouses and wives making a new life in Australia. Australia has some of the greatest schools and companies in the world and for this reason, attracts some of the best Filipinos to the country.

Here are a few of those successes

When Jose Luis Acompanado, a veterinarian for the provincial government of Northern Samar in the Philippines, applied for an Australian Development Scholarship in 2006 he was faced with a mission: to help arrest the increase in incidence of carabao deaths in the province.

In the rural agricultural areas in the Philippines, carabaos are important to help farmers in tilling their lands. In 2006, Northern Samar was grappling with the increasing death rate of carabaos in the province due to a dreaded animal disease known as Hemorrhagic Septicimia (HS), a highly fatal bacterial disease seen mainly in cattle and water buffalo. Because the disease develops so quickly, few animals can be treated in time, and recovery is rare. The spread of the disease will wreak havoc to farmers’ incomes and food production.

Jose Luis was awarded a Diploma in Tropical Veterinary Science/Master in Veterinary Studies in James Cook University in Australia. Australia is widely known as host to one the largest cattle populations in the world. In the course of his studies and visits to farms and laboratories in Australia, Jose Luis equipped himself with knowledge and skills on updating and modernising the conduct of post-mortem examination of animals, laboratory analysis, disease identification and formulation of measures for both cure and prevention for animal diseases.

Leonardo Ibot knew too well how difficult it is to teach in a rural college in the Philippines, and much more in Mindanao, where illiteracy and poverty permeates. A product of a rural college himself – the Sultan Kudarat Polytechnic College in Tacurong City – Leonardo knows that the road to a vocation on teaching is rough and difficult in his province.

The Sultan Kudarat Polytechnic College is the only established center of higher and tertiary education in the Sultan Kudarat province and other towns of neighboring Sarangani province.

The twin malaise of illiteracy and poverty continue to haunt Sultan Kudarat and its neighboring communities, not only because of local strife or cultural conflict, but because of lack of opportunities. The quality of education – both in teaching and learning – is also expectedly poor because the teachers do not have opportunities to improve their competencies and excel in their chosen profession.

“I knew inside that there is an answer to all these, if not in my province and my people, surely just beyond sight,” Leonardo said.

Returning from taking a Master in Educational Studies (Pedagogy) in the University of Newcastle in Australia as an Australia Awards scholar, Leonardo set out to implement his re-entry action plan—enhancing the teaching competencies of teachers at the College of Education of the Sultan Kudarat Polytechnic College.