ON A three-hectare lot under the shadow of Mt. Malasimbu and surrounded by mango trees stands Bahay Katutubo, a house that serves as a dormitory for some 20 schoolchildren of Aeta origin.

Located some nine kilometers away from a mountain where a real Aeta community thrives, the school provides the children with meals, bunk beds, a study area and other necessities that enable them to attend classes, rain or shine, at the Bayan-bayanan Elementary School in Dinalupihan, Bataan, a kilometer away.

The children?s struggle to remain in school and gain acceptance for who they are never fails to inspire the volunteers who visit them.

This April, some of the children went up the stage confidently to receive awards for academic excellence.

Staying in school has been quite a feat for these painfully shy and retiring children, often referred to as kulot for their naturally tight curls. Yoga teacher Willy Reyes, who met this community through Evelyn San Buenaventura, a Dinalupihan-born accountant and volunteer who now serves as an Audit commissioner, describes them as ?very sensitive and pure of heart and mind.?

If the unat (straight-haired lowlanders) so much as shout at them, the kulot scamper off. For too long, Reyes continues, ?the Aeta have had a history of being preyed on for their gullibility by the more well-off unat, who would offer them cigarettes and alcohol, then lend them sums of money. Unable to pay back these loans, the Aeta watch helplessly as their land is seized. With education comes awareness about their rights to their ancestral domain as indigenous people.?

But age-old beliefs have been as culpable, discloses Raffy Abilong, officer-in-charge and teacher at the Bayan-bayanan Elementary School. In the past, he recalls, at least 10 percent of Aeta school kids would drop out in the middle of the academic year to help their parents in their farms. Over and over, he would explain to the parents why their children have to stay in school, and how the children?s right to study takes precedence over their duty to help out their parents.

Fortunately, the parents get motivated when they see that outsiders and organizations are helping, Abilong adds. The volunteers include private individuals from the Quota Club International, Vest Foundation Inc., Australia Business Volunteers (ABV), and the Rotary Club of Manila.

The change has been encouraging. ?It used to be that when the Aeta children see properly dressed unat, they flee. Today, they?ve learned to integrate and play with unat kids.?

To keep Bahay Katutubo going, Music News and Features has teamed up with Waya Araos, ABV country manager for the Philippines and owner of Kiss the Cook Gourmet (KTCG), and Bösendorfer piano to have Oliver Salonga play a repertoire of Mozart, Chopin and Prokofiev in benefit lunch and dinner concerts at the restaurant today.

Salonga, 24, earned his masters in piano performance at the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and is working on his artist diploma there. This, after winning the Sadie Zellen piano prize, the gold medal in the 2008 Joenju International Piano Competition in South Korea, among others.

Much depends on how Salonga and the concert producers pull off this quixotic mission of cultivating a new audience for the classics away from traditional concert auditoriums.

Kiss the Cook Gourmet is located in the heart of Quezon City, a world away from Bahay Katutubo where Jasper, Domingo, Resly and Jessie Balenton, Jessa May, Joshua, May Ann, Precy, Princess, Rachel Ann, Robin and Romel Paule, Angelo dela Cruz, Danilo, Josephine and Mark Anthony Ulila, Angel and Ann Liwanag, Jenjinary and Regica David, Benzar Pelagio, John Peter Panganiban, Warren and Mica Ann Gonzales, Celinda and Julie Francisco are pursuing their dream.

But it isn?t too difficult to imagine flute music wafting in the silence of a rainy afternoon in the hills of Bataan in an exchange of heartbeats and an Aeta elder responding with a celebratory ritual dance to the beat of drums. ?

Kiss the Cook Gourmet is at 65 Maginhawa st., UP Village, Quezon City, and seats 60 per performance. Call 748-4152 or 0906-510-4270 for tickets to the intimate concert with Oliver Salonga.