Br. Edjhay Casa (SMA) and Br.

Winston Quilaton (ESHT) Philosophy of Anthropology

Our personal findings concerning the root reasons of poverty in our nation at this time include
politicians' terrible governance because of corruption, high levels of population growth, lack of access
to essential services (e.g., healthcare, water supply, etc.), low possibilities for education and
misguided education system, and low creation of jobs for its own citizens and high requirement for
application that the underprivileged individuals cannot attain.

As concerned citizens, some of the concrete programs we want to suggest to the government
to improve the situation of the poor in our nation is ‘free education’, especially for the most
disadvantaged citizens of our nation. The education system should also change its competencies on
primary education by giving emphasis on the improvement of Emotional Quotient (EM) or values
education rather than on Intelligence Quotient (IQ) in order to teach them the right values and avoid
corruption in the future. Too much intelligence while late development on values molds them to
become wise but corrupt politicians. Even though this is a long process, it must result in a great and
quality education for the betterment of our nation. In addition, we ought to lower the cost of
fertilizer and provide free irrigation as further help for farmers. Furthermore, increasing the
domestic opportunities for Filipino citizens is not just a solution to eradicate poverty but also lower
the qualifications while providing benefits for all workers, both in private and public, contractual or
regular employees (e.g., paid leaves, sick leaves, healthcare, insurance plan, student loans, free
transportation, and educational support for children). They are working hard to sustain their family
needs but still remains poor, particularly the contractual workers. They should have stable jobs with
just benefits, so, only the government and business sectors can help them. Finally, as the election is
nearly approaching, the only thing that the citizens can do is to vote for a politician who has a big
heart for the poor, rich background in agriculture (of course not in hoarding and overseas
partnership), and qualified to take all these steps a realistic move.