Punlaan School, a project of the Foundation for Professional Training, Inc. has contributed over the last forty years to the efforts of nation-building through its commitment to educate and provide employable skills to marginalized women. To date, it has helped more than 11,000 women through its various programs and some 3,000 more are graduates who are now gainfully working in various establishments both here and abroad. The holistic program offered by Punlaan includes training in skills for the hospitality industry, developing good work habits, and nurturing positive values that are essential to a dignified life.
In the early seventies, Punlaan School was started informally by a group of volunteer housewives, who were inspired by Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, as a school for househelpers in Manila, to help them professionalize their work in the home and to learn the value and importance of the spirit of service.
Punlaan School became one of the very first technical training schools, since in 1975, there were only a handful of them which offered culinary, dining service and housekeeping services for young students, housewives and househelpers.
In 1975 it was officially recognized by the Department of Education (DepEd) for the launch of its one-year Home Arts Course; and in 1985 it was recognized as a technical vocational institute offering a two-year technical course in Home Arts. By 1991, Punlaan had modified the two-year Home Arts Program to Hotel Services and Food Preparation Technology and upgraded the one-year Home Arts to the Home Skills Training Program.
In 1993 it pioneered the two-year German Dual Training Program in Food and Beverage Services for the hotels and restaurants in the Philippines sponsored by the Landesinstitut for Internationale Berufsbuildung (in Germany) in collaboration with the Hanns Seidel Foundation (also German) and the Hotel and Restaurant Association of the Philippines using the competency based curriculum—Accredited Tourism Training Center by the Department of Tourism up to the present.
It was in 1994 that than President V. Fidel Ramos signed the Dual Training Law institutionalizing the Dual Training System as the preferred mode of vocational training, showcasing Punlaan as the government’s in this regard. The first batch of the system graduated in 1995 and to date, 22 batches have completed the dual training course.
Today, Punlaan is a multiawarded school providing a dual training scholarship program on Hospitality and Culinary Arts for the hotel and restaurant industry and a model school of the government for the successful implementation of the dual training program since 1993. Among these were: a recognition from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) in 1996 for the effective implementation of the Dual training Program and for the alleviation of poverty of underprivileged young women; SKAL International Tourism Personalities Industry Award in Education in 1999; TESDA’s Kabalikat Award conferred by the Department of Labor and Employment in 2000.
By 2009, Punlaan School had upgraded the Home Skills Training Program with the TESDA Competency Based Curriculum for the Household Services Program. In 2014 Punlaan became one of the first few schools approved as a Senior High School, administering the Senior High School Dual Training Program -Technical Vocation Track in Hospitality and Culinary Arts. The pilot program opened in June 2014 ahead of the K to 12 Educational Reform which becomes effective nationwide only this year, 2016.
More than 70 highly rated hotels and restaurants have become industry partners of Punlaan, where its students do their on the job training. Punlaan graduates are 100-percent employed in prestigious hotels and restaurants, both here and abroad.
Testimonials from the industry are rife, especially from five-star hotels and prestigious restaurants who cite Punlaan graduates as being very values- oriented, exhibiting such core values as helpfulness, sincerity, courtesy and humility. Likewise, the graduates themselves have said that Punlaan School gave them the foundation for their future as the instrument that shaped their technical, spiritual and moral being. Many of them have testified that they have been uplifted from being underprivileged women to professionals that are not only employable, but preferred by the industry.
Thus, Punlaan School, now on its 40th year, is strategically positioned as a specialized school recognized by DepEd, as well as by TESDA, as giving its students the competitive edge to advance globally in the field of Hospitality and Culinary Arts today and in the years to come.
It has to be said that thousands of underprivileged young women still await access to the same opportunity to be transformed in order to live with dignity. Punlaan School has therefore embarked on a fund-raising campaign to meet this challenge by building a bigger school with better facilities, starting this year, to replace its existing 60-year old structure, at a cost of some P180 million. Donations, which are tax-deductible are most welcome, and Punlaan invites you to make checks payable to FPTI-NEW PUNLAAN PROJECT, or deposit your contribution to BPI account no. 0321-0256-41. God bless your generosity!
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