Looking for a way out

WHEN Sevilla opened its first high school in 1986, 67-year-old Gerardo Barro was too old to attend school. He managed to finish up until the fourth grade, in a school near Magsaysay, the farthest and poorest barangay in Sevilla, Bohol.

Now as Magsaysay’s village chief, Barro knows education is key in improving the lives of the people in his barangay. There’s now a newly built high school nearby and more and more of its youths are able to go to college. Some however opted to join the New People’s Army, especially during height of the communist insurgency in Bohol in the 1990s.

People in Magsaysay say their lives since then have hardly changed. But many continue to hope that they will have a better future.

Read PCIJ’s latest report, “War and Peace in a Bohol Barangay.”