Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Z. Duterte on Wednesday said librarians will always have a friend in the Office of the Vice President.
"I believe in your contribution to our education, not just to our learners but even to our adults. All of the residents and all of our kababayans, they deserve libraries everywhere they go and every place they visit," said Duterte during the Annual National Congress 2022 Philippine Librarians Association, Inc. at the Iloilo Convention Center in Iloilo City.
She recognized the role of librarians in shaping the mind of learners.
"Many of us present in these halls learned to love reading because there are librarians who understood our specific information needs and ushered us into finding the books that we needed," she said. "We developed some of our most fundamental socio-emotional skills through reading children's stories."
She added: We became characters of the books we were reading. We journeyed with them, felt their frustration, their sadness, their grief. We dreamed with them. And down to the last page, we waited for the happy ending. And oftentimes, we triumphed."
Duterte also shared her experience with establishing the Davao City Library and Information Center when she was still mayor of Davao City.
"When I was a mayor, Davao City won Best Library — three times national and one international awardee the Davao City Library. I love reading books, that is how I learned English because my mother likes to read and I got that from my mother," she said.
The Davao City government, she said, prioritized the building of the 5-story library for Filipinos to have something to be proud of.
