Save the Slum Kids with the Kariton
The lowly kariton has saved young lives – Drug users turned teacher volunteers. Youth gangsters became educated teens. Filthy slum kids practised proper hygiene. All these because of the modest-turned-CNN award-winning “Kariton Klasrum” by Efren Penaflorida, Jr.
Efren, or “Kuya Ef” is the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year. In his character, the whole world has seen that even the poor can make a huge difference in society. Efren is one of the many Filipino youths who belonged to a family with difficult economic circumstances. Who would have thought that he would become one of the founders of the Dynamic Teen Company (DTC), the creator of the “Kariton Klasrum”
Kariton Klasrum by the Dynamic Teen Company
The “Kariton Klasrum” is an alternative means to educate poor children in slums about basic hygiene and values formation. The ‘Kariton’ is literally a wooden push cart that strolls around the slums to cater to children of the poor. It is loaded with books, pens and paper, and other school materials that aid in teaching unschooled and labor-exploited youths. The project has also reached out to give first-aid treatments and feeding programs to these children to complete its core mission of: K4 – Kariton, Klasrum, Klinik at Kantin. Because of the “Kariton Klasrum”, both younger and teen-aged youths from the slum recognized their dignity as any child with human rights.
Anyone of us can turn a hopeless child into a promising youth of the future.
Here’s how you can help push the Kariton Klasrum.
DTC was founded in August 1997 with just one push cart launched in Cavite by four teen-agers of Cavite National High School. Currently, President Gloria Arroyo has ordered the Department of Education to look into the “Kariton Klasrum” model as an alternative to conventional teaching.
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