Selected North Fairview Elementary School students from grades 4, 5 and 6 spent a couple of carefree hours on Oct 21 to help promote the games of the Filipino heritage. The students were part of the launching of Magna Kultura’s Larong Pinoy–an organization spearheading the integration of traditional Filipino games to the physical education curriculum of Philippine public elementary schools with Metro Manila as the jump off point.

The event, which commenced at 2pm at the school gym, was attended by the Department of Education (DepEd) officials and staff from various NCR offices. Volunteers from the Rotaract club and PUP Communications Society joined the fun as sports marshalls (aka referees), coaches, and buffet attendants alongside Magna Kultura staffers.

The student athletes displayed their skills and talents in patintero, tumbang preso and piko in a demonstration in front of the DepEd guests and hundreds of their schoolmates.

Grade 4 student, Ricky, who has never played patintero before opined that the game holds better gameplay than basketball.

“Kala ko nakakatawa siya (I thought the game was funny),” he said. “Pero mas maganda pa pala ito sa basketball (But this is much better than basketball).”

According to the Magna Kultura website, the program is not an ordinary game event.

“Larong Pinoy outreach is a sports clinic with scientific drill methods, with skill exercises and instruction process for playing. At same time, Official Tournament Rules has been developed which will be institutionalized in the National Palarong Pinoy that will be launched in the Philippines. Magna Kultura will be releasing handbooks, game equipments and provide permanent playing courts on-campus grounds of schools.

Magna Kultura Foundation and DepEd envisions to revive the games in the country. To re-instutionalize it as a national sports with a reputable inter-school competitions conducted in all regions.”

Dickie Aguado, executive director of Magna Kultura, said that Larong Pinoy ultimately aims to promote Filipino nationalism, family bonding, and community enlivening, with its vision of starting a national interschool competition.

“The vision is to reinstitute the games as our national games with a reputable national competition, therefore, in the future we will have interschool competitions that are like UAAP or NCAA,” Mr. Aguado said.

Recently, DepEd released a circular memorandum signed by undersecretary Ramon Bacani directing all Division of City schools to prepare for the outreach clinics and incorporate the instructions in the school’s curriculum.

However, despite the thrust of the DepEd memorandum, the hardest part of promoting the games is yet to come, according to Tina Filamor, program manager at Magna Kultura.

“The pressures that we faced in getting Larong Pinoy rolling is just the icing on the cake,” Ms Filamor said. “One of the challenges that we may face is getting teachers to accept Larong Pinoy as part of their program, on top of other pressures of being a public school teacher.”

The Larong Pinoy campaign is set to run from October 2008 to March 2009.