Meet the First Batch of UPIEAA Student and Faculty Grantees From the ACHIEVERS Program

Not many might know but the UPIEAA had moved very quickly on awarding the student financial assistance grants and the faculty financial assistance grants even while the IE ACHIEVERS fund raising was going on.

Confident that funds could be raised on the strength of the message that financially-distressed IE students deserved financial support to help them make it through the IE years with minimal distraction, such as borrowing from classmates and having to repay back, doing odd tutoring chores, etc., the UPIEAA pre-empted the results of the formal launch in October and decided to immediately award three student grants. These went to the three applicants who made it through the August 29 interviews at Chocolate Kiss in UP Diliman by the screening committee of the UPIEAA, composed of Jop Yap, Edwin Reyes, and Bing del Rosario.

Seven student grant applications were submitted, and of the seven, three were deemed to seriously merit the financial assistance. The first three student recipients of the UPIEAA student grant were: Julius Conol, Anicia Chan, and Carmela Acosta. Their first P5,000 monthly grants were given last September 29 for the month of September. The October grants were given on October 15^th and subsequently on the 15^th of every month.

For the first few months of the grant, checks were issued but by December 2016, through the efforts of director Edwin Reyes, a BDO senior executive, BDO cash cards were given to the recipients and used for disbursements. On a monthly basis, administrators Benjie Mirasol, Bing del Rosario and Lowell Lorenzo would regularly transfer funds from UPIEAA’s bank account to the cash cards.

In addition to the student awards, UPIEAA also agreed to provide grants to young teachers who were still not eligible for the university’s Teaching and Research Grants, or TRGs, who would be available once teachers had done more than three years of teaching service. The argument went – teachers may not enjoy the TRG but they still have major expenses and they are at their most vulnerable in terms of seeking alternative employment in the private sector or with better-funded private universities. So giving the deserving faculty the equivalent of the TRG until they become officially eligible was only fair. The first teacher awardee was Alyssa Jean Portus, whose P5,000 monthly financial assistance grant began in September 2016. By January 2017, the board felt confident enough about the IE ACHIEVERS finances to green-light the second faculty award to Raymond Lagria.