My First Brigada Eskwela with Nippon Paint Colourful Dreams

School days will soon be upon us, parents and students are already busy buying school supplies prepping up for the upcoming school year. It makes me reminisce the time when I was still a student, now I have my own kids who I sent to school. Time flies by so fast! I know first day of school can be exciting for most students and I want to be part of that excitement even in a small way that's why when I got invited for a Brigada Eskwela in one of the schools here in Las Pinas I was excited too, as I have also wanted to do volunteer works.

Painting a tree on one of the classrooms together with my talented fellow Blogger, Martin

It was fun, and the thought of doing it for the children makes it more special.

Brigada Eskwela is a modern bayanihan where nationwide voluntary effort is done to make sure that public schools are clean, safe and conducive for learning. The Department of Education-Las Piñas Division’s Brigada Eskwela Adopt-A-School-Program encourages private companies, professionals, and education stakeholders to contribute their time and resources in helping in the school maintenance effort to ensure that public school facilities are ready for opening this June. And Nippon Paint (Coatings) Philippines which recently launched its flagship corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative dubbed as Colourful Dreams, has endeavored to support this.

“We at Nippon Paint have always wanted to give back to the community and share with them our success in the three years that we have been in the Philippines. What better way to do these than to support a meaningful project like Brigada Eskwela. We are thankful to have found partners in DepEd-Las Piñas and PSID-AA, with whom we share a common goal of creating a safe, conducive and colourful environment for children’s learning and development,” relates Nippon Paint (Coatings) Philippines General Manager, Michael Chung.

Carrying the theme “Create Joy Today, Hope for Tomorrow”, Nippon Paint Colourful Dreams has also partnered with the Philippine School of Interior Design Alumni Association (PSID-AA), whose members have volunteered to share their skills and talents. 

Nippon Paint Colorful Dreams’ first Brigada Eskwela beneficiary school is Pamplona Elementary School Central in Las Piñas City, which welcomes about 3,000 students every school year. Together with volunteers from PSID-AA, Teachers, Parents and Pupils and Bloggers too, Nippon Paint painted the school’s library, reading corners, hallways, and exterior premises with designs that inspire creativity and fun learning.

As part of its Green movement, which emphasizes on developing and offering green products to ensure sustainability, and the agreement with DepEd - Las Piñas, Nippon Paint used its new toluene-free Pylox Spray Paint and Green Choice Series, a line of high-quality coatings that are water-based, no added lead and mercury, and near-zero Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) coatings. This means these products are environment friendly and most significantly, safe for everyone specially children.

Being a paint company, Nippon Paint knows that even a little bit of paint and colour can go a long way in making learning fun and engaging. Through its Colourful Dreams and Brigada Eskwela CSR program, Nippon Paint aims to motivate students to learn with joy, be their best and hope to achieve their most colourful dreams.

There were also a Story telling session, afterwards the kids also joined the mural painting.

I'm proud of our finished product! I hope the kids will love the fresh coat
of color and hope we have poured in our works together with Nippon.

As a final note, Chung concludes, “While this is the first time that we are launching Colourful Dreams in the country, we have been reaching out to the academic community through the Nippon Paint Young Designer Award, which recognizes the talents and potentials of student interior designers and architects, a service that we do for the professional design industry. Brigada Eskwela, on the other hand, is geared towards younger students and the community as a whole. In the future, Nippon Paint aims to expand its CSR initiatives by working with more communities on projects that are meaningful and beneficial to people.” 

For more information about Nippon Paint, visit www.nipponpaint.ph or check out www.facebook.com/nipponpaintphilippines