Project LEAD (Lead, Empower and Achieve through Data-Driven Decisions), with the slogan “With empowered leaders come great schools!”, is a banner project of DepEd Region 8 which is a brainchild of the OIC–Regional Director himself, Dr. Ramir B. Uytico, CESO IV.

The project is a regional-initiated project in pursuance to RA 9155, which highlights the role of School Leaders in localizing basic education policy and principles into projects and services that would fit and address the needs of school community.

DepEd Region 8, through this project, would like to move from the old bureaucratic practice of top-to-bottom management to creative and innovative leadership that emphasizes empowerment, create the trend of abandoning passive compliance in favor of active, contextualized implementation and strengthen the path for critical yet proactive thinking rather than indifference.

One major activity for the realization of the entire project is a three-day workshop, held last October 10-12, 2016 at the Leyte Park Hotel, Tacloban City, participated in by the thirteen (13) Schools Division Superintendents, together with their Assistant Division Superintendents, Chiefs and Supervisors. The workshop’s objective was to capacitate the participants in becoming strategic leaders driven toward innovative and well directed programs and projects. On the last day of the workshop, all the divisions presented to the crowd the drafts of their proposed projects and were critiqued by the members of another division, the OIC Assistant Regional Director – Atty. Rhoan Orebia – and the OIC-Regional Director Ramir Uytico, too.

The Project LEAD wants to inspire all the thirteen (13) SDSs and team to cascade the same workshop in their respective divisions in order for the schools to come up with their own projects to be implemented as well. “It will be nice to see all the schools showing in their bulletin boards the project that they initiated. I know they, the School Heads and teachers, will feel proud and empowered,” said Uytico during the first day of the workshop.

Uytico wants the projects to be culture-based and will be able to address the felt-needs of the schools which will then lead to a better and well-oiled region as a whole.

The 13 division projects are expected to be formally presented in another gathering by early November.