The Speech I
never gave.
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I am more than proud to be with you today on the
occasion of the 3rd Expanded Students’ Grants-In-Aid Program for
Poverty Alleviation (ESGP-PA) Regional Assembly with the student stakeholders
or grantees (I refuse to call you “beneficiaries” for the word connotes, at
least to me, a sort of mendicancy), together with their respective focal
persons from all over MiMaRoPa Region, also with our guests from the Department
of Social Welfare and Development or DSWD led by RD Wilma D. Naviamos, those
from Commission on Higher Education or CHED and the Department of Education or
DepEd representing their respective state colleges and universities or schools.
To all of you, welcome to Occidental Mindoro!
Allow me to thank, too, the distinguished
individuals from my alma mater, the Occidental Mindoro State College (OMSC) who
with full trust and confidence invited me to be one the lecturers in this
Regional Assembly. They are Marilyn Guilas Nielo, PhD, the Vice President for
Academic Affairs, and Dr. Allan Paul F. Catena, Coordinator for the Student
Affairs Services. My gratitude too is extended to Dr. Arnold N. Venturina, SUC
President II. Let us give them a warm round of applause!
The topic assigned to me is, “Today’s Filipino
Youth Amidst Impoverishment” and I pray that I could do justice to this very
challenging topic I am about to discuss. Indeed, this is a very universal and
broad topic. You guys really placed a heavy yoke upon my shoulders. I am an
avid fan of boxing and in the sport we call “sweet science”, there is a
strategy called “cutting the ring”. I will tell you about that later.
I am glad you used the word “impoverished” instead
of “poor”. There is a big difference between the two. We use the word “poor”
when talking about living status it means “people without material possessions
or wealth”. While on the other hand, “impoverished” (adjective) according to my
own understanding, is used to better describe the circumstances in which a person
became poor. For instance, "Filipinos are impoverished by the unjust
social structures we are in".
This lecture is a journey and like any other
journey, we ought to have travel companions. Learning is a pilgrimage that is
not overly concerned with the destination but more on the lessons we learn,
re-lean and unlearn from the road and our co-pilgrims. As we go along with the
subject, we will thread the gem of ideas and concepts shared to their
respective generations and audiences by Gustavo Gutierrez, a theologian from
Peru and a practitioner of Theology of Liberation and the late Jose “Ka Pepe” W.
Diokno, a quintessential nationalist and a former Philippine senator. (Google
would be of great help if you want to know further about them) Let us see what
will happen when we put the ideas of a Third World theologian from Latin
America and considered as founder of Liberation Theology; a Filipino senator,
an anti-Martial Law crusader and founder of developmental legal aid, together.
As they say, there’s no harm in trying. I will
“cut the ring” and focus only on the following two slices to share: (a) Spirituality
and Human Rights as Essential Elements in Poverty Alleviation, and (b) The
Philippine Economy and Social Realities: Why Are We Impoverished? I will only
limit my topic on these two important concerns. Towards the end, I will be
giving some challenges and call to action that hopefully would serve as
guideposts towards your journey beyond this momentous gathering. My final
challenge, by the way, is anchored on a basic biblical question. “Cutting the
ring” in boxing, by the way, is never giving your opponent enough space. Say,
pin him in a corner to deliver punches in bunches or unleash your most lethal
blows.
But before that, let us look at the larger
picture. Record
shows that the country is unable to meet international and national goals for
education. And still is. Poverty is one of the main causes of the country’s
poor education record and has affected participation in education in more ways
than one, according to “Education Watch Preliminary Report: Education
Deprivation in the Philippines," a study done by five advocacy groups
including E-Net Philippines, Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education,
Action for Economic Reforms, Popular Education for People’s Empowerment, and
Oxfam in 2003.
Years later, the ESGP-PA came into existence. As
we all know, ESGP-PA found its legal basis through the CHED’s Memorandum Order No.
09, Series of 2012. It is an initiative taken by the government to provide
access to the poor but capable students to higher education. The objective of
the program is to increase the number of higher education graduates among poor
households by directly providing financing for their education in selected
SUCs. I will not dwell much on the details of ESGP-PA for our next speaker from
DSWD is more competent on discussing it to you in the most extensive and more
credible manner.
From here, let us now seek the help of our first
travel companion.
To “fathom impoverishment” as what Dr. Catena put
in his invitation letter to me, we need first to ask what is the aspiration of
the Filipino youth amidst impoverishment. Gustavo Gutierrez, a Catholic priest
and a Latin American theologian used a very symbolic material: the drinking
well. “Everyone one has to drink from his own well,” wrote Gutierrez in his
book, “We Drink from our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People”. And to
contextualize this in the Philippine setting today, this question is imperative
to pose: “From what well can the impoverished youth of the Philippines drink?”
Allow me to emphasize that my supposed “esteemed
knowledge in the field of community development”, (again, these are words of
Dr. Catena’s taken from his letter to me) is anchored on my 20 years of working
with the Basic Ecclesial Communities (BECs) of our Local Church, the Apostolic
Vicariate of San Jose, initially, allow me to spiritualize a little bit about
the topic. The impoverishing social situation in our midst, from my spectacles
of faith, needs to be rooted from the main source of the living water: our
spirituality. Spirituality was often equated with religious aspects like
prayer, sacraments, rituals, penance or even fasting and bible-reading. Yes,
they are part of it but those are not enough. Spirituality, no matter what
religious belief you are practicing or denominations you are into, it is a
lived faith in response to the Spirit. Therefore, it involves a way of viewing
and experiencing God, others, self and the world. “Spirituality,” Gutierrez
writes, “is like living water that springs up in the very depths of the
(historical) experience of faith.” Truth to tell, aside from the Spirit of
Jesus, to drink from our own well is to live our own life, individually and
collectively, rooted in our individual freedom, our basic human rights.
Today is December 10, 2016 and the whole world
commemorates the 68th year of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and it is but opportune time to reflect on how we encounter basic issues
of human rights and human dignity in the concrete historical reality and
context unfolding in our midst. This is a real experience that can be a
foundation of our life project as stakeholders and implementers of ESGP-PA.
Poverty caused by inattention, violation, distortion to and of the very essence
of human rights brings about gradual and, in case of extra judicial killings,
instant deaths. The death caused by impoverishment is not only physical but
mental and cultural as well.
According to Gutierrez, “It [death] refers to the
destruction of individual persons, peoples, cultures and tradition.” In sum, Spirituality and Human Rights are main
themes and dimensions to loosen the chains of impoverishment among our youth.
Human rights are the well where we must drink from. Our human rights are our
wells and we much fetch water from it with buckets of responsibility and
obligations. How? I cannot offer an answer. I might as well reserve that on
your organizational and individual undertakings as well as in the competence of
your respective focal persons. Your dynamism and creativity will flow like a
thirst quenching well, I am sure. Just remember that strategy without ideal is a
menace and ideal without strategy is a mess. Take it from a Gustavo Gutierrez
reader.
Let us now go to our economy and social realities
and our travel companion this time is the late Senator Jose W. Diokno. Though
this talk was delivered in September 6, 1980 before Inter-School Business
Association at PICC, Diokno’s message titled “Economic and Social
Consciousness” is still relevant today. From Diokno’s time up to the present, though
I do not have the statistics to back this up like the situations of educational
system and national poverty that I have mentioned a while ago, just looking from
the realities around us today, beyond any possible doubt, the life of the
Filipino poor is one of hunger and exploitation, inadequate health care and
lack of suitable housing, difficulty in obtaining an education, inadequate
wages and unemployment, struggles for their rights, and repression. Diokno
asked: “What has gone wrong with our economy?” Why is our economy still
undeveloped? Well, our economy was run by politicians and businessmen and we,
the impoverished, learned to regret it. It is the biggest bane in this equally
impoverished country of ours.
I can only cite two major reasons for such a sorry
state from said speech of Ka Pepe. First, our economic policy makers have given
too much importance to the problem of economic growth and not enough to the
problem of economic development; that efforts are concentrated on increasing
production to the neglect of improving distribution and equalizing consumption.
Second, our economy is export oriented, import dependent. Instead of organizing
our resources, our capital and our manpower to the needs of the people,
especially the impoverished, the past and present administrations geared them
toward the demands of multi-national corporations and capital-greedy
businessmen. This economic policy resulted, then and today, to privatization,
contractualization and liberalization. Diokno taught us that “economics is more
than an exchange of goods; it is also an exercise of power. And just as
concentrated power is politics, so politics is concentrated economics.” Our
economic and educational policymakers must realize that we need a Filipino
economy and education where their goal should meet the needs of the
impoverished Filipino people, it should make our workers enjoy just wages to
buy the goods the economy produces and the key to economic progress is not on
how much foreign loans we get or foreign investments we can attract, or exports
we can ship. We need an educational system that would boost a nationalist
economy. Regardless of what profession you will be involved in the future, you
are all economists and educators, in one way or another, in the privacy of your
homes and in your respective spheres of influence.
The Diokno Challenge from my lenses is this: What
we need are educators and economists who are socially conscious and politically
aware, educators and economists who can distinguish structural problems from
personal problems, who for example, seek the solution to poverty, not in
foreign aids but in structural change, because they see poverty is caused, not
by defects in the character or training of the impoverished, but by the
injustice of our social system. A sound policy on poverty reduction best serves
the appropriate educational system and vice-versa.
At this point, allow me to share that impoverishment
or being poor is also a way of feeling, knowing, reasoning, making friends,
loving believing, sufferings, celebrating and praying. We, the impoverished,
constitute a world of our own. But life is larger than what we have and what we
are. This situation must be remedied and struggled through legal and moral
bounds, without resorting to violent means. We may get angry with the
situation, but please, do not hate life!
For Gustavo Gutierrez and Ka Pepe Diokno,
spirituality and economy are community enterprises and a communal quest. And
from the apparently different and sometimes diverse dimensions of spirituality
and economy, we draw the promise and hope of reducing, if not dismantling
poverty through higher education.
Let me conclude my topic citing my favorite biblical
question. After The Fall God came to the garden seeking Adam and Eve asked,
“Where are you?” (cf. Gen. 3:8-9) If God is all knowing, why God would ask such
a silly question? Philosopher Martin Buber offers a rationally good answer. Buber
says God asked that question not to learn something new or to know a certain
truth or predicament of things. Rather, God asked that question in order to
make Adam and Eve confront their current state in life. It was a question of
challenge. If we believe that God also suffers with us in our impoverishment
and our co-deliverer from injustice and poverty, our answer to this question
must be: “With you, Lord. With You!”
Thank you very much for such a brief but
meaningful journey. My congratulations to all who made this pilgrimage a
fruitful reality.
Good morning everyone....
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(This
speech is supposed to be delivered on the 3rd Expanded Students’ Grants-In-Aid
Program for Poverty Alleviation (ESGP-PA) Regional Assembly on December 10,
2016 at Hillside Farm and Resort, Magsaysay, Occidental Mindoro but due to the
Regional Committee’s last minute alteration of the topics and speakers, I was
not able to deliver this. Photo: Don Sevilla of webpages at SCU)
