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Mental health must be a second-nature concept to everyone. As much as there are counseling services in an organization, the very awareness to the concept of mental health is quite meager. The result is a forgotten counseling service which students do not even avail themselves for the mere reason that they do not see its importance.

EduKonsulta aims to raise mental health awareness to schools by activating the teachers and counselors. These professionals have direct contact with the students and can be an effective medium to push for mental health awareness raising advocacies. Although seminars for students will also be done as the business scales, EduKonsulta believes in the efficacy of training the trainees.

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Amidst efforts in pushing the importance of mental health to the students, the professionals—particularly the teachers-turned-counselors—must also receive training in such an urgent matter. These professionals act as secondary parents to students, therefore arises the need to ensure that they will be observant of their students’ mental health statuses.

EduKonsulta seeks to provide professionally- and research-grounded seminars and resources to teachers and teachers-turned-counselors to the mental health management of their students. EduKonsulta can begin by providing little to no charges for the seminars, and work on to providing multi-day training workshops and courses with formal certifications as the organization scales.

Training the trainers is efficient and effective—as is the “teach a man how to fish” saying—that upgrades the couseling services of the respective organizations such trainees are serving under.

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The pandemic has added a new dimension of difficulty in raising mental health awareness, but also placed the role of counselors to the pedestal. Counselors must be activated even more in order for students to have a guiding hand as they continue their studies online. Students are forced to adjust to a sudden shift in their way of life and routine. This problem is on top of what other issues the family is currently facing, such as finances, which could entice students to drop out of school.

EduKonsulta seeks to empower students but more-so the conselors, in order for them to be effective guides to the students. Additionally, EduKonsulta will exert effort in raising awareness on the government’s solutions to the mental health—such as the Department of Health’s Mental Health Program—while also providing such services if possible. Partnerships to relevant government agencies can also help in making the efforts in raising mental health awareness and improving counselling systems more seamless and effective in the face of distance or remote learning.

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With the pandemic ongoing, the obvious solution was online learning, but not everyone in the Philippines has easy access to the materials needed for online learning. Not every student will engaged to the class which could range from connectivity, finance, and interactivity. To adapt to this, schools used online learning softwares to give a proper online learning experience for the students as well as for the teacher.

Given that there is no easy access to student counselling services, teachers should be the initial persons to provide counselling for students as much in their power. Teachers should connect further with their students and see what distresses them. They could provide resources of what they can to help them in their learning and also contact parents and vice verse if as student is bothered by something.

In this sense, both the teachers and guidance counselors coordinate with each other on helping the students' mental health needs. Although it is highly suggested that schools and governments should make it a practice to hire proper counsellors as to not give the burden of counseling of students towards the teachers only.

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Educators are key in protecting student mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Focused, meaningful interactions matter greatly.

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The UNESCO office in New Delhi, India, has created guidelines for principals, teachers, and parents to help children maintain their mental health during these difficult times. These guidelines are entitled: Minding Our Minds During COVID19 Helping School Going Children Manage their Mental Health.

In this guideline, they have stated several ways that teachers and the like can help students maintain their mental wellbeing. This includes engaging with students, offer fun activities they can do together like online games, have them share their experiences and what they learn at home, and yoga.
These guidelines entail

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Before the pandemic, Philippines currently had the highest dropout rate among all of the ASEAN countries with 7.82%. This increased during the pandemic as there are 3.53 million students who did not enroll in school as of February 2021. There are reasons as to why a high number of OSY such as family background, low number of decent work/wages, etc. But according to a study by Can et al., 2017, countries with a high number of poverty incidence and poor government institutions tend to have dropout rates. This may eventually lead to social costs like reduced political contribution, excess in demand for social services, poor health, lower wages, high unemployment rates, as consequences of a country with high student dropouts. In the PH, mental health has not been thoroughly studied in terms of identifying the relationship between mental health and dropping out.

In a study of mental health associated with dropping out of school to Danish citizens by Hjort et al. (2016), poor mental health was significantly associated to dropout among students in vocational and higher education.

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Even when the pandemic forced schools to follow an online system of teaching, not everyone is capable to get the necessary materials to pull through this way of education. During August 11, 2020, about 23 million student both in public and private schools are enrolled. This is a significant reduction from 2019 where there are 27.7 million enrolled.

In this year there are about 4 million students who are not enrolled last year. 2.75 million of these students were from private schools.

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Governments' strategy to reduce dropout rates is by spending on additional classrooms and school materials, and providing scholarships.

However, one example of an effective way to reduce college dropouts is an example in Chicago, Illinois.

They view that people who have dropped out of school from an individual perspective can not only be an economic problem; but also psychological/mental problem.

The Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois targets neighborhood school dropouts. Community-based alternative schools and youth centers provide a structured
program of education, including GED preparation, employment preparation, job training and counseling. The program illustrates an effective way for community-based
organizations to target the needs of youth dropouts in their neighborhoods and to work together in raising funds and designing a focused program. A 60-70 percent high
school/GED completion rate has been reported. (Orr 1987)

The caveat for this proposal is that it needs funding.

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We will do more research. By doing research we get valuable data to see which communities or groups are in need of help. We will take a look at the present solutions taking place as of the moment and figure out the gaps they have in order to improve upon them.

Another strategy to improve our understanding on the problem of mental health towards GS and HS students in the Philippines is to visit public and private schools and conduct focused group discussions with students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and guidance counselors.

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While education has been very accessible today, completion of education has been a serious topic that needs intervention, particularly when PH has seen increasing dropout rates. The government has been progressively trying to fix the issue by providing scholarships and financial assistance to families who can not afford quality education. However, income is only a dimension in which determines the students' likelihood to continue going to school. Another main factor as to why a student who had dropped out is mental health-related issue. This may come in a form of hopelessness, lack of ambition, depression, anxiety, etc. Schools should be a platform in which students can learn progressively and in a healthy manner.

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One of the causes of persistent school dropouts related to mental health from grade school to high school is the lack of mental health awareness that should be provided by the schools and government. This is apparent in public schools in the Philippines where the government lack funding in public schools, causing problems like subpar facilities and lack of guidance counselors and programs. This issue has been quite common especially during the time of the pandemic.

On the curriculum side, there is also a lack of physical and mental health wellness courses for students.

At the same time, the labor supply of guidance counselors have been decreasing due to stagnant wages and lack of income opportunities in the field of guidance counseling.

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Mentor: Mary Ann T. Jabson (SHS and JHS English Teacher at Eulogio Rodriguez Integrated School in Mandaluyong)

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Here are some solutions that both government and school institutions are currently doing to ease the student dropouts related to mental health well-being.

DepEd has launched mental health helpline system for learners and teachers, consisting of contact information from different organizations to support learners, teachers, and the public in times of mental and psychological distress.

There is also an attempt pof House of Representatives panel to adopt a resolution urging the Department of Education (DepEd) a mental health awareness course in the K to 12 basic education curriculum for all public and private secondary high schools.

There are also other mental health programs, and webinars that are provided by schools, DOH, and DepEd.

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Customer Relationships:

Focus on partnering with public schools so that these public schools may endorse us to the students/out-of-school students who need guidance counseling.

We need a list of public school students who are potentially flunking in our partner public schools.

Revenue Streams:

Paid Services - Private school students/parents consultations.

Canon and Accenture are examples of companies who have consistently allocated resources to help public school students. Being able to partner with such company that aligns with our goal in eliminating student dropouts allow for these companies to uphold their values, may it be used for marketing and PR purposes.

Key Partners:

Public Schools and Private Schools in Metro Manila (TBA)

Key Suppliers:

N/A (Service company)

Talent Acquisition - Psychology Students from DLSU, ADMU, UST, UP, and other universities and State Universities.

Guidance and Counseling FB group to get skilled guidance counselors.

Local Public and Private Elementary and High Schools.

Guidance Counselors and other trainers

Volunteer psychology students

Corporate partnerships (e.g. Unilever, J&J, EY, etc.)

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The team would have to consult with teachers and staff of our partner schools. Since the teachers are the ones who spend the most time interacting with the students, it would make sense that they'll be the ones to notice if their student/s are experiencing issues regarding their mental health.

By communicating with the teachers, they would be able to direct the team to the students that are having problems with their mental health. Lastly, it is important for the team to communicate with the teachers and staff, since they'll be the ones who would provide contact with the students' parents and/or guardians.

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Most solutions that governments tend to go about when there is a high dropout rates are through providing scholarships, food allowance, school materials, and etc.

However, most student dropouts have reasons beyond their economic situation. Psychological and mental reasons such as having no career prospects are one of the main reasons as to why people drop out of school.

Consulting students with their mental health and career prospects should also be given attention.

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With regards to mental health, according to our mentor, Ms. Mary Ann Jabson, there is a distinct lack of guidance counselors for the amount of students with mental health needs. In schools, senior teachers with high charisma and a background in psychology are requirements to be selected as a guidance counselor.

Given that not many teachers fit all those criteria, the teachers who are assigned as guidance counselors are overworked having to handle both counseling and handling their own classes.

Our platform, Edukonsulta, aims to address these problems by providing an online guidance counseling service for our partner schools. In Edukonsulta, we would hire psychology major interns to participate and help out with communicating with the students. Edukonsulta then provides on the job training for these volunteers encouraging them to take up a career in guidance counseling.