With Facebook, Skype, and other platforms, communicating with their families including their kids back in the Philippines – sometimes even in real-time — is just a few clicks away. Through these innovations, they can update each other and parents can catch up on their children’s activities and academic progress.
Yet, challenges remain. With the parents living far away from their families, they are denied the opportunity to actually monitor their kids’ whereabouts – whether they are indeed at school, at home, or somewhere else.
The good news is that this challenge is already being hurdled by some parents in the country, including those working abroad. Red Circle Global, a digital automation company, has started to address this problem while helping to revolutionize the country’s educational system.
According to founder and CEO Edward Roldan, the company offers an affordable end-to-end school automation system in the Philippines.
“Our technology in a nutshell is a combination of different expensive and updated automation systems per school department and operations bundled into one suite platform,” said Roldan.
Among others, the system allows parents and guardians to have their own online accounts through which they can monitor the activities and whereabouts of their kids. According to Roldan, it assists the parents in offering better parental guidance remotely and make the school an OFW-friendly one.
“We are living in unpredictable times to date,” said Roldan. “Being empowered to know whether your child is inside the vicinity of the school can give you peace of mind.”
But it isn’t only the parents who are benefiting from the system. School administrators and teachers themselves are also reaping the fruits of Red Circle Global’s system, being an end to end automation solution.
Roldan explained, “We are also making it easier for school administrators to roll out programs since they have an updated access to the number of materials for their school operations. Our system has an integrated analytics system that directly assists the school administrators in having a better picture of the operational trends and patterns of the school. For teachers, they are empowered to collaborate more with their fellow teachers since our platform is offering an online repository where they can share study materials and syllabi.”
Red Circle Global’s school automation system has other features.
It provides unlimited radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards per student, the only school automation company in the Philippines to do so. The system also comes with a free military-grade RFID printer made in Great Britain, free lanyard per student, and personalized communication hotline.
“Our clients can even reach us via Viber or phone 24/7,” said Roldan who is also a volunteer and advocate of the Philippine Red Cross.
To date, Red Circle Global is serving six private schools in the country. These are Our Lady of Sacred Heart College in Guimba, Nueva Ecija; St Raphael in San Rafael, Bulacan; Grace of Shekinah School in Sta. Maria, Bulacan; St. Therese in Malabon City; Potter and Clay Christian School in Malabon City; and Mother of Divine Providence School in Marikina City.
This does not mean though that the automation system only caters to private schools. The tech company is now engaged in talks with public educational institutions as well, namely Universidad de Manila, DepEd Quezon City, and Quezon City University.
By engaging more private and public schools around the country, a greater number of parents including OFWs with kids will be empowered to monitor their children’s daily lives even if they’re on foreign land. As such, they will be in a better position to offer stronger guidance and thus become better parents.
More schools using the system will also mean more empowered teachers and administrators and a more efficient operational system for the school.
But there’s more to come. In the pipeline is the rollout of an EduBox, a plug and playschool automation system that’s as easy as plugging in a play station or videoke unit.
“Our mission is really to uplift the school education system through automation,” said Roldan. “If we can automate most of the private and public schools in the Philippines, they can save more resources for infra improvement.”
After obtaining a diploma in International Culinary Arts from De La Salle College in Bacolod City in 2009, Roldan is currently enrolled at the BS Entrepreneurship program of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. Aside from founding Red Circle Global, he also steered the growth of other tech startup initiatives such as Appstruc and Carpool Tour Philippines.
The Red Cross volunteer has solicited P1 million in cash donations and various logistical assistance from the Association of Filipino Shipowners to the Philippine Red Cross in the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda. He has also formed a network of partners in Singapore, Vietnam and Mainland China.
Roldan also lent his expertise in election-related activities. In 2016, he successfully led JCI Philippines’ nationwide projects in connection with the election as its national chairperson. Meanwhile, in 2013, he also managed the parallel campaign machinery of a candidate in the May 2013 elections.
