Our History
Dualtech started in Manila in 1982 as a social development project to help alleviate the widespread poverty in the Philippines
Through vocational education and training adapting the German Dual Training System to local conditions. In 1991, a similar project was initiated in Canlubang, an agricultural estate turned into industrial use, in the town of Calamba in the province of Laguna located south of Manila.
Dualtech, Then and Now
September 27, 1991
I came to look at the place which we were allowed to occupy temporarily as training venue and field office in Canlubang. It was located in Sitio Paikit. The place was a former motorpool of Carmel Investments.
Some months earlier, we conducted surveys of schools, barangays, students, companies and interviewed managers of industries and key people in the community. Canlubang was still Canlubang. Everyone knew each other. And we were coming in as outsiders.
In Carmelray, only three companies have completed constructing facilities and most of the road networks were still being constructed. The old mill was still operating and sugar cane were still being traded nearby. The old locomotive station was still there and wagon upon wagons were still being towed occasionally to its destination.
It was a community – a village.
October 2, 2011
After a fun run organized by the alumni came a reunion of many familiar faces. The 29th anniversary of Dualtech is being celebrated in its main campus in Canlubang. Some of those from the earliest batches in Canlubang attended and recalled those days when they had to plod through muddy paths when it would rain or cover their faces with hankies to avoid inhaling “alikabok” during hot summer time. They survived, they have good jobs, they have nice families and are grateful.
The mahogany trees planted by those first boys have grown. The wirings, the railings and louvers and fixtures they helped fabricate, install or weld are still there. They helped build the school.
Twenty-Nine years of Dualtech – which started in Pasig, then moved to Makati, then to Mandaluyong, then to Pasay, then to Binondo in Manila! Twenty years of Dualtech in Canlubang! Those were fruitful years indeed. For me who have been working in Dualtech for almost twenty-five years now, I have witnessed miracles happen before my eyes through all those years. God provides.
Hearing many former students speak, among them a priest, who said the Holy Mass for the event, I felt happy. These people have learned how to learn, how to work, how to acquire and practice virtues and how to live. They are Dualtech’s miracles! Thanks be to God!