With his first budget statement to Congress President Aquino proposes a nearly 20% increase in the education budget from 175 billion pesos to 207 billion. This coupled with a nearly 20 billion peso increase or near tripling of the 4P’s or the conditional cash transfer program aimed at 2.3 million indigent families to improve school attendance represents a significant investment in the human capital of the nation. For all intents and purposes, we can call this an education budget. Let us now examine why.

The Philippines remains as a “Tier 2 Watch List” country in the United States State Department annual report on Human Trafficking.

UN official: Reducing risk of cities to disaster “extremely important” to achieving MDGs
from Xinhua News Agency
Mobilizing local governments to invest in making their cities resilient to disasters is “extremely important” to the achievement of the …