In October 2000, a group of Ateneo college students began a journey that would change their lives and countless others forever.
In a Theology class under Mr. Harvey Keh, these students learned about social justice, equality, and being men & women for others. Over mid-afternoon coffee breaks they thought long and hard about how these concepts related to their lives, and soon after, Alay Ni Ignacio was born.
With the awareness of the situation of Philippine education, the group of passionate college students envisioned Alay Ni Ignacio or ANI as the venue to push for education development.
That summer and every summer since then, Ateneo volunteers have been teaching advanced classes in English, Science and Math, and conducting enrichment workshops for public high school students to help prepare them for college.
Because summer was deemed too short to adequately prepare the students for college, Pathways to Higher Education was born. With the help of a grant provided by the Ford Foundation and guided by both the Ateneo de Manila University and the Synergeia Foundation, a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to improve the public education system in the country, the student-led organization which initially was just a summer school, was developed into a a year-long leadership formation program over a total of six years (2 preparatory years beginning 3HS and intensified leadership formation when they begin college until they graduate.
Nurturing competent, compassionate and concerned leaders does not happen overnight. It takes years of intense academic, values and leadership formation to not just awaken the leader in everyone, but more importantly to ingrain in them the attitude and skills they need in order to face the challenges of leadership
Since then, Pathways has helped bridge over 500 public high school students to college and has see almost 200 students graduate from quality colleges and universities, and become leaders in their communities.
