Support from Spanish government to increase number of students learning Spanish in the Philippines from 1000 to 8000

Over the next two years, at least. The pilot program for the first year (2009) resulted in 35 teachers being trained and 1000 students studying the language, and over the next two years that will now increase to 50 schools, 100 teachers and 8000 students annually, after which the program will be 'mainstreamed' for 2013 to 2014. Of course, this is just the numbers directly supported by the Spanish government, not the total number of people studying the language.

I've always liked the two images I created here, showing the position of the Philippines in relation to Spanish-speaking countries. Your average world map shows Europe and Asia in the centre with North America on the left, making East Asia look almost like the edge of a cliff or some limitless waterfall:

But in fact if you just switch the view a tiny bit the location of the Philippines compared to the Spanish-speaking world suddenly becomes a lot clearer.