MANDALUYONG, Philippines — 14 December 2022 — For its efforts to promote financial literacy and education among youth, Yuchengco-led Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC)’s financial inclusion super app RCBC DiskarTech was recognized as one of the Department of Education’s valuable partners during the 2022 Partners Appreciation Program held at Wack-Wack Golf and Country Club, Mandaluyong City, on 13 December 2022.
The event recognizes the external partners from both public and private sectors who significantly contributed to the needs and gaps of public schools in the country.
RCBC, the country’s leading and award-winning digital challenger bank, has been a key partner of the department for its contribution such as the ‘Aralin Sa Madiskarteng Pananalapi’ modules that teach students and teachers of the digitalized concepts within finance industry such as ipon (savings), seguro (insurance), paluwagan (loans), and bayad (payments). The program is in support of DepEd Order No.22, series of 2021 titled “Financial Education Policy and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) National Strategy for Financial Inclusion” that aligns the department’s programs to include financial literacy lessons in the K-12 basic education curriculum.
Aside from the modules, RCBC DiskarTech also pioneered the implementation of “DiskarTechpreneur Boot Camp and Competition” that invites senior high school students to participate in a webinar and business case competition that allows them to extend the learning from the modules into real-life applications. Winning teams of the competition will get a capital boost to make their business case studies into a viable enterprise.
“Financial literacy and education are embedded with every RCBC innovation. We believe that in order to foster a digitally-abled and financially literate future, we need to start honing our youth with future-proof skills like proper finance management and entrepreneurship,” said Lito Villanueva, RCBC Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer.
In her keynote address, Philippine Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Z. Duterte thanked the organizations for their continued support and commitment in filling the needs of the education sector.
“In the last 5 years, DepEd has received billions of pesos worth of contributions from our partners. This is a significant contribution that we simply cannot ignore. For your continuing support, we are truly grateful… I welcome you all to explore partnerships with the Department of Education. Together, let us rebuild a stronger, resilient, and adaptable basic education system in the Philippines,” said Vice President Duterte.
The Vice President also teased about a new portal set to launch on January that allows different sectors to access menu of investments and contribution to different school divisions and regional offices, e-appointment system to schedule exploratory meetings with key officials, directory, tax incentive application tracker, and interactive partnership map that provides a quick view of the geographical distribution of partnership and remaining investment need within the education community.