A new blockchain building program in the Philippines is helping train young developers in a remote province to write blockchain code and shipping projects in the chain.
Students from Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan, a long, sparsely populated island province isolated west of the Philippines, have spent weeks learning something completely new to them: Move, an open-source smart contract language originally developed from Meta’s Diem project, now adapted by the former developers who went on to build Sui and Aptos.
Called the Sui Builder Program, the initiative offers a skills-based and results-oriented path that contrasts with the breakout economies that many young Filipinos have turned to as systemic disparities widen and formal opportunities shrink.
“What this opportunity has brought us has changed our mentality [that] we should think more and dream big,” Nicholo dela Rosa, a third-year computer science student at Palawan State University, said Friday on stage at the YGG Play Summit, the largest player-centric Web3 gaming event held annually in Manila.
His team, The Scouts, won a hackathon as part of the program to create Campfire, an on-chain app that digitizes certificates and community assets and lets users earn badges for participating in events. Its co-developer, JK Rabanal, described it as a “gamified Luma on Sui,” referring to an app popular among crypto industry events.
Asked why Move is a good starting point for new developers in places far from the major tech hubs, James Wing, who leads AAA gaming partnerships at Mysten Labs, developers of the Sui blockchain, said: Declutter the programming language “enables object-oriented models” that are a “more natural architecture to learn and build on for real-world use cases.”
The initiative was supported by the Philippine Government’s National Agency for Information and Communications Technology through its Regional Office for Palawan. It opened training centers and provided computer labs, Internet access and local coordination.
Yield Guild Games helped design and deliver curriculum, mentorship and connections for jobs and project opportunities through Metaversity, its educational arm.
A total of 127 students took part, although only 50 were able to complete the program after two consecutive typhoons disrupted the final weeks of education earlier this month.
Speak with Declutter on site two days before the statistics were released on Friday, said Bianca Cruz, co-lead at Metaversity Declutter the atmosphere in Palawan was much slower and more relaxed, but the students were eager to learn.
Cruz recounts how a student told her that Palawan “rarely” has such a program.
“There’s a sense that they haven’t really had access to these developer communities, but the moment something finally lands in their backyard, they show up, even if it means a long commute and giving up their weekends,” Cruz said.
Still behind
But while the program’s emphasis on producing job-ready developers aligns with the government’s goal of creating eight million digital jobs by 2028, it also reflects a national education system that has so far prioritized employability over core competencies.
According to a 2018 analysis, Filipino students ranked near the bottom globally in reading, math and science, with some of the largest numbers of test takers failing to meet minimum proficiency levels.
Years later, the pattern has persisted. According to a 2022 OECD report, scores have improved but are still among the lowest globally, highlighting long-standing gaps in basic comprehension, numeracy and critical reasoning. The country also still lacks basic digital literacy, according to a 2022 World Bank study.
This is because the country’s education expenditure has historically been lower at 3.6% of GDP in 2024, falling short of regional standards of 4% based on UNESCO’s recommendation.
The country’s Budget Management Agency claimed in August this year that it had reached the 4% minimum for next year’s allocation.
The initiative gives Filipino students “exposure to advanced digital skills” and signals “a commitment to a future-ready workforce that goes beyond traditional BPO roles,” Paolo Lising, a global development student at Harvard University’s Extension School, told me. Declutter.
Still, “access alone is not enough,” Lising notes. “Many Filipinos, like those who joined Axie Infinity, lack foundational literacy and comprehension skills, limiting their ability to navigate complex digital systems,” he said, citing upcoming research as part of his courses.
“For programs like these to have a lasting impact, they must be accompanied by stronger foundational education,” he added.