Eduardo Fajardo, Class 1964
Philantropist
From poor boy to philantrophist. This is the story of Ed Fajardo, AHS Class '64.
The Board of Trustees and the academic community of De La Salle University-Manila conferred on Eduardo Galang Fajardo the degree of Doctor of Humanities honoris causa in recognition of his achievements as a corporate administrator, principal of foundations, philantropist, and educator in the Philippines and even abroad.
The conferment ceremony was held during the University’s commencement exercises held on June 18,2005 at the Plenary Hall of Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).
Born to Natividad Galang-Fajardo, a public school teacher, Fajardo is also a product of the public school system. He experienced the struggles of a scholar and witnessed the professionalism and dedication to work of his teachers at Francisco Balagtas Elementary School and Arellano High School in Manila.
A scholarship at the Ateneo de Manila University allowed Fajardo to pursue a college education. As a University and Far East Bank scholar, he obtained an AB Economics degree, cum laude, and graduated class valedictorian. He was also a gold medal awardee for academic and exemplary accomplishments of the Economics Department. He earned a master’s degree in Business Administration at Harvard University through a scholarship grant.
He served as instructor in the Department of Economics at Ateneo de Manila University, and as Executive Director of the Hong Kong Regional Training Center of Chase Manhattan Bank. He also headed the Executive Training Program of the Philippine National Bank International Department.
Fajardo is now principal of the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, Inc. The Foundation is dedicated to upgrade the infrastructure and instructional resources of institutions, as well as provide access to quality education to talented but culturally and economically disadvantaged individuals, particularly in the fields of Mathematics and English. Through the foundation, Fajardo shares his vision, dreams, and resources to talented youth and teachers.
Among the schools that the foundation has helped are Arellano High School, Cavite State University, Ateneo de Naga, Ateneo de Davao, Ateno de Zamboanga, University of the Philippines, Philippine Normal University, and De La Salle University-Manila. (DLSU Newsletter)
The Br. Andrew Gonzalez Hall (Building code: A; also known as Gen Ed Building or "A" Building) is a 20 storey academic complex designed by Philip H. Recto Architects for De La Salle University. It is located on a 1,700-square-meter lot between Taft Avenue and Fidel Reyes St. and in front of the Enrique M. Razon Sports Center. Rising to a height of 90 meters, it is said to be the highest educational structure in the Philippines.[1] The building houses the General Education Department, the College of Education and the Asia-Pacific Center for Teachers’ Education and Development (ACTED). The building was formerly referred to as the GE/CED/ACTED Building before being named in honor of Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC on September 28, 2005. The building was formally inaugurated on March 1, 2007 in celebration of Br. Andrew's 67th birthday.[2] The building was opened for use in May 2006 for the first trimester despite not being completely finished at the time.
Eduardo G. Fajardo, chairman of the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, Inc., contributed a significant amount for the construction of the building. Fajardo was born to a poor family and worked hard to alleviate his family from poverty. He credits his success to education and contributed various material and buildings to different schools. [3] (Wikipedia)
Be A Hero: Be A Filipino!
Eduardo G. Fajardo Commencement Address
De La Salle University – Manila
June 18, 2005
Dedicated to My Mother, My Hero
Natividad Galang-Fajardo
( 1910 – 2004 )
Not too many people know that this is the third time I have tried to be a LaSallian. Back in 1964, I was desperate to get into college on scholarship because I knew that my mother, who was raising all nine of us by herself, could not afford anything else. My only options were to get a scholarship or to work by the day and study at night as all my older brothers and sisters had done before me.
One day, somebody told me De La Salle University had scholarships for poor students. So, I walked from our home in Tondo, near the railroad tracks of Tutuban Station, through Abad Santos Avenue, along Bambang St. through Magdalena, then Avenida Rizal, through Plaza Sta. Cruz, over the bridge spanning the Pasig River, through City Hall, along Taft Avenue, through Isaac Peral, through PGH, and finally LaSalle Taft. There, I was told I needed to pay a P 3.00 examination fee. Since I did not have the money (which explains why I had to walk in the first place), I walked back to Tondo, reversed myself through Taft, Isaac Peral, etc., until I got back home. My mother confirmed my fears but she referred me to my married older sister, Ate Sylvia, who managed to save the money for me after three weeks. I walked back again to De La Salle where they told me that they would schedule me for an exam a month down the road. In the meantime, I heard about another school , went there, took the exam and, miraculously, won a full four-year scholarship. After the celebrations, I remembered the P 3.00 so I went back to La Salle, again on foot, to reclaim it. There, I was told it was non-refundable. So, I walked the streets again but, somehow, the trip felt longer than ever before.
Today, I am honored to receive a doctorate, honoris causa, from La Salle for my work for the last two decades with scholars. Pardon my pride but I think I deserve this degree: I walked to La Salle and back 3 times and I paid P3.00 for this, 41 years in advance!
Seriously, I would like to thank De La Salle for granting me a doctorate degree in the humanities, honoris causa, and for giving me the privilege of addressing this gathering today.
May I have the honor of being among the first to congratulate the De La Salle University Class of 2005 for a job well done. You have earned the right to call yourselves with pride “LaSallians”, a name that evokes the excellence of your academic traditions and holds the promise of your future as leaders of our country and educators of the poor. May I now ask all the parents and loved ones of the graduates to please rise and remain standing. Graduates, let us give your parents and your loved ones a big hand in gratitude for their love and support throughout your years of study in La Salle. They are your heroes, the first ones in your life. Thank you. (Parents and loved ones, you may now sit down. Thank you.)
May I also acknowledge the presence among you today of a special group of teachers. Will the 30 joint scholars of the Natividad Galang Fajardo Foundation and De La Salle University please rise and remain standing. They are teachers from 17 public schools and the Philippine Normal University who will receive their Master of Arts degree in Education with you today , 5 with Distinction and 2 with High Distinction. They will go back to teaching jobs in public schools with lower salaries and longer work hours than in most of the private sector jobs but, I assure you, they are committed to, even passionate about, teaching the deserving poor. Indeed, these thirty “Bravehearts”, are true heroes of our country. Let us also give them a big hand. Thank you. (Scholars, you may now sit down. Thank you.)
My biggest hero is my mother, Natividad Galang-Fajardo, “Ima” as we called her in our native Pampango. Her family was her life. In 1955, she had a double-crisis. My father had a massive heart attack and was bed-ridden and jobless with big medical bills to pay for the next 12 years. If that was not enough, she had 9 children, the youngest being only 1 year old at the time. Things were so bad that her relatives offered to adopt some of us but she would have none of that. My mother drew on her faith and focused her energies on keeping her family together. She cooked “champorado” by the tub and sold it in a “kariton” beside the Quiapo church daily before the crack of dawn. She fried “lumpia” and “turon” by the hundreds which we then peddled all over Sta. Cruz district in the afternoon. She bought piglets in January, fattened them with our neighbors’ table scraps and sold the pigs in May for our school expenses. As poor as we were, she always had a coin or two for Mass, a mandatory weekly event for all of us when we had to wear our best clothes.
What sustained her was a vivid vision of a better life through education. Thanks to the free public school system, all nine of us reached high school. Thanks to scholarships, three of us finished college. She inspired all of us to believe in ourselves and to excel in anything we were doing which happened to be academics for me. In her 93 years with us, she never complained, never asked for anything for herself and always encouraged us to take care of others around us.
Growing up poor in Tondo, you develop a sense of stages in your life and your role in each. In the first stage, people take care of you. You have met two such heroes so far, your parents and your mentors, who taught you lovingkindness and compassion, critical thinking and a sense of mission. In the second, you learn to empower yourself by learning a trade. Here, you take care of yourself as you become your own hero. You look for either a scholarship to college or, failing that, you get a job quickly and study at night. In the third stage, you take care of others. You look after your younger siblings’ education, you take care of your own family, you support your parents in their old age and you care of anybody else who comes along the best way you can. The stages overlap, the years fly by so fast and life repeats itself as you become a “hero” to others.
Today, you have become full-fledged members of society, in the second stage of your life. From this day forward, you will take care of yourselves and learn a decent trade. You will learn to excel in whatever it is that drives you with a passion for that is the only way you will achieve any thing important in this world. Consider yourselves lucky, very lucky, that you are LaSallians. Your parents have the means to get you to the best school where you can get the best education along with the best minds and talents in the country. But, even now, you must be aware that, soon enough, you will have to take care of others around you. Because you have been gifted with so much, you will be responsible for a lot more.
Let me now show you who you are responsible for.
I am told that, in 2004, there were 7.7 million Filipinos working abroad, roughly 9.3% of our total population. If you add the undocumented ones, the percentage figure can easily rise to 10% of our total population. One out of every ten Filipinos is working outside the country! If each such Overseas Filipino Worker (“OFW”) has even only two dependents, that means nearly one out of every three Filipinos today depends on OFW remittances for their livelihood. For you to get a better appreciation of this diaspora, 2,378 Filipinos left every single day of 2003 to work abroad.
This exodus is the single biggest mass movement of workers in our century. It has and will continue to have major economic, social, political, and moral ramifications on the future character of our country and our people.
For some time now, OFWs have been carrying us on their shoulders. To begin with, our economy is totally dependent on OFW jobs to keep unemployment down and to maintain economic growth at a steady pace. The earnings of OFWs are probably the only thing keeping our economy afloat at this time. $ 8.55 Billion of annual remittances go a long way towards supporting families back home and shoring up the government’s dollar reserves to help service maturities from our $ 56 billion of foreign loans. The major growth sectors in our country today are principal beneficiaries of substantial expenditures by OFW dependents in housing, clothing, food and education. Clearly, OFWs are modern-day heroes of our country.
Like all else, there is a price to pay for all these. The Filipino family system is at risk. Almost one-third of our population is growing up without at least one parent: the absence of a mother or a father against the backdrop of available cash has strained our traditional family structure and values: we see broken marriages, second families, prostitution, out-of-school youth, drug addiction, among others, on the rise in the OFW sector.
It is no bed of roses either for the OFWs abroad: the women are the most vulnerable to human trafficking while the men take on some of the most dangerous jobs. If they escape these, many OFWs are forced to accept entry-level jobs because the quality of public school education back home has so deteriorated that they lack the professional skills to compete at higher job levels. Thus, every time a bomb goes off in Israel or a truck driver is kidnapped in Iraq or a maid is beaten up in Singapore, we hold our collective breath as a nation, fearing that yet another Filipino has been abused or, worse, that another Filipino is going home in a casket.
And still Filipinos continue to brave dangers and endure loneliness away from their families for a simple reason: we have collectively failed them. We have failed to create enough decent jobs to save them from a life of grinding poverty back home. We have failed to create a fair and just society, respectful of the rights of every man, woman and child and protective of our environment.
Every generation has a defining challenge. My generation was asked to reclaim democracy from a cruel dictatorship and to restore justice. We did get democracy back but we have failed so far to make it responsive to the needs of the people. The challenge for your generation today is to create enough decent jobs for a fast-growing population and to promote a better quality of life for all in a fair and just society. The personal challenge for you, of course, is to stay home, forego the “American Dream” of material comforts and cast your lot with our people. Your response to these challenges will define you and your generation; it will be the story of your life.
You need to prepare to move up to the third stage of your life wherein you begin to take care of others. This time, “others” will include not just your immediate family, not even just your La Salle family. You need to be a special kind of hero: you need to be a patriot, someone who loves an entire country, someone who takes it upon himself to be responsible for an entire people.
At the first level, patriotism is simply the awareness of and compassion for all of our countrymen; it is to be one with all Filipinos. It is a celebration of a common history and values with all people within the same shared space. It is an identification with an entire people, an affirmation of being part of a transcendental spirit animating all Filipinos so that we feel each other’s pain and we rejoice in each other’s triumphs.
Ateneans and La Sallites should not weep when they lose to each other in basketball games. They should weep, instead, for Christians and Moslems who are casualties in and refugees from the continuing conflict in Mindanao. We should raise funds not just for the annual Ateneo-La Salle athletic tournaments but for scholarships for the children of our neighbors right here in Leveriza who today are separated from the rich of La Salle not by the short distance of a few street meters but by the wall of poverty.
For a just society, we should teach our children at an early age that the poor and the ethnic minorities were not created by a lesser god but by the same God we worship. We should tell them that God is in our employees -- our drivers, our gardeners and our maids -- who, therefore, deserve the same respect and support as we give our own family for the blessings they give us in our daily lives.
At the second level, patriotism is creating vehicles of hope for one’s countrymen. It ennobles the national psyche. A poor man with a job is a happy leader and willing provider for a family. A bright student with a scholarship is a person with a future and a stake in our society.
LaSallians, do not to leave for work abroad. I can understand why poorly-educated Filipinos have to look for jobs abroad but not you. You are in the best position to start a business here or to start a professional career of your own with your La Salle education, your family finances and your personal connections. Do not just take a job, create a job! There are many business opportunities here for the bright, the hard-working, the creative and the patient: just ask the Koreans and the mainland Chinese businessmen who have been settling here in droves in search of a better life. Create jobs so that our OFWs have an option to stay home, be with their families and strengthen our institutions and values as a nation.
LaSallians, donate scholarships to the deserving poor and set to motion infinite circles of goodwill. The scholarship Mr. Jose B. Fernandez, Jr. gave me to the Ateneo de Manila University in 1964 has since grown, through the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, to 329 scholarships, 56 funded professorial chairs (of which 31 are in La Salle), several scholarship funds and one graduate school of mathematics education, among many others. Imagine the next circle. Right in your own home, provide scholarships to the children of your household staff. They, too, are your responsibility.
Better yet, donate a professorial chair. Adopt a public school teacher, buy her books, help her source a computer; make it your personal apostolate to encourage and to support her as she serves God and country in the trenches of public education. A typical teacher touches the lives of at least 5,000 students in a 25-year career. Her inspiration to our young, however, is forever: At 57, I still carry with me today values and lessons about life I learned from my teachers at F. Balagtas Elementary School and at Arellano (Public) High School half-a-century ago.
At the third and highest level, patriotism is sacrificing one’s own time, one’s career, and, if necessary, even one’s own life for love of country. LaSallians, trace a non-traditional path: pursue a service-oriented career.
Teach in state universities yourself, especially in the provinces where there is a scarcity of good Ph.D.’s. Work for the government and be a model of an honest, efficient and motivated civil servant for the sake of the masses who desperately need social services. Join NGOs to protect the environment, uphold human rights, teach population control to the poor, or safeguard the environment. In short, donate yourself to your country. Be a hero to the rest of us.
La Salle parents, please do not tell your graduate to become yet another Wharton MBA selling Citibank private banking products to already rich people in Asia. Allow him, instead, to make a meaningful career here. If he is good in Mathematics and if he loves teaching, why not grant him Ph.D. scholarship so that he can teach the poor? Forget the pay; by the mere fact that you have a LaSallian son, God has given you enough blessings already. Donate your son to the poor, as the Father gave us His Only Son. If you wish, hedge his bet:: give your own son a huge professorial chair so that he can better concentrate on his apostolic work. Encourage him daily. Affirm his decision.
For me, all three levels patriotism come so naturally. They are ingrained in the three stages of life in Tondo as we start with “heroes” who help us and become “heroes” to others later on. Patriotism begins with my mother’s love for her children and expands into her children sharing her love with all Filipinos through our Foundation. “Inang” in Tagalog and “Ima” in Pampango represent to me all that is caring, loving, noble, and worth sacrificing oneself for. The Philippines, our country, is my “Inang Bayan”, my mother’s land, my motherland. It is the home of my heroes, my mother and my teachers. Now, it is the home of my own family -- my wife and my two sons. Everything that I am, I developed here; everything that I have, I earned here. Why should I be selfish ? “ Bakit ako magmamaramot ? ” And so I expand my mother’s love for me and my love for my mother to my love for my own country. Thus, I am responsible for all my countrymen. I am a Filipino. I am responsible for all Filipinos.
And so are you, too, my dear graduates. You are not LaSallians, you are more than that. You are Filipinos. Therefore, love your country as you love your own mother and as your mother loves you.
And so, my dear graduates, go forth into the world. Write a good life story. Be a hero. Be a Filipino.
My mother be with you. LaSalle be with you. Our country be with you. God be with you.
Maraming salamat po sa inyong lahat. Pagpalain tayong lahat ng Diyos.
Philantropist
From poor boy to philantrophist. This is the story of Ed Fajardo, AHS Class '64.
The Board of Trustees and the academic community of De La Salle University-Manila conferred on Eduardo Galang Fajardo the degree of Doctor of Humanities honoris causa in recognition of his achievements as a corporate administrator, principal of foundations, philantropist, and educator in the Philippines and even abroad.
The conferment ceremony was held during the University’s commencement exercises held on June 18,2005 at the Plenary Hall of Philippine International Convention Center (PICC).
Born to Natividad Galang-Fajardo, a public school teacher, Fajardo is also a product of the public school system. He experienced the struggles of a scholar and witnessed the professionalism and dedication to work of his teachers at Francisco Balagtas Elementary School and Arellano High School in Manila.
A scholarship at the Ateneo de Manila University allowed Fajardo to pursue a college education. As a University and Far East Bank scholar, he obtained an AB Economics degree, cum laude, and graduated class valedictorian. He was also a gold medal awardee for academic and exemplary accomplishments of the Economics Department. He earned a master’s degree in Business Administration at Harvard University through a scholarship grant.
He served as instructor in the Department of Economics at Ateneo de Manila University, and as Executive Director of the Hong Kong Regional Training Center of Chase Manhattan Bank. He also headed the Executive Training Program of the Philippine National Bank International Department.
Fajardo is now principal of the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, Inc. The Foundation is dedicated to upgrade the infrastructure and instructional resources of institutions, as well as provide access to quality education to talented but culturally and economically disadvantaged individuals, particularly in the fields of Mathematics and English. Through the foundation, Fajardo shares his vision, dreams, and resources to talented youth and teachers.
Among the schools that the foundation has helped are Arellano High School, Cavite State University, Ateneo de Naga, Ateneo de Davao, Ateno de Zamboanga, University of the Philippines, Philippine Normal University, and De La Salle University-Manila. (DLSU Newsletter)
The Br. Andrew Gonzalez Hall (Building code: A; also known as Gen Ed Building or "A" Building) is a 20 storey academic complex designed by Philip H. Recto Architects for De La Salle University. It is located on a 1,700-square-meter lot between Taft Avenue and Fidel Reyes St. and in front of the Enrique M. Razon Sports Center. Rising to a height of 90 meters, it is said to be the highest educational structure in the Philippines.[1] The building houses the General Education Department, the College of Education and the Asia-Pacific Center for Teachers’ Education and Development (ACTED). The building was formerly referred to as the GE/CED/ACTED Building before being named in honor of Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC on September 28, 2005. The building was formally inaugurated on March 1, 2007 in celebration of Br. Andrew's 67th birthday.[2] The building was opened for use in May 2006 for the first trimester despite not being completely finished at the time.
Eduardo G. Fajardo, chairman of the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, Inc., contributed a significant amount for the construction of the building. Fajardo was born to a poor family and worked hard to alleviate his family from poverty. He credits his success to education and contributed various material and buildings to different schools. [3] (Wikipedia)
Be A Hero: Be A Filipino!
Eduardo G. Fajardo Commencement Address
De La Salle University – Manila
June 18, 2005
Dedicated to My Mother, My Hero
Natividad Galang-Fajardo
( 1910 – 2004 )
Not too many people know that this is the third time I have tried to be a LaSallian. Back in 1964, I was desperate to get into college on scholarship because I knew that my mother, who was raising all nine of us by herself, could not afford anything else. My only options were to get a scholarship or to work by the day and study at night as all my older brothers and sisters had done before me.
One day, somebody told me De La Salle University had scholarships for poor students. So, I walked from our home in Tondo, near the railroad tracks of Tutuban Station, through Abad Santos Avenue, along Bambang St. through Magdalena, then Avenida Rizal, through Plaza Sta. Cruz, over the bridge spanning the Pasig River, through City Hall, along Taft Avenue, through Isaac Peral, through PGH, and finally LaSalle Taft. There, I was told I needed to pay a P 3.00 examination fee. Since I did not have the money (which explains why I had to walk in the first place), I walked back to Tondo, reversed myself through Taft, Isaac Peral, etc., until I got back home. My mother confirmed my fears but she referred me to my married older sister, Ate Sylvia, who managed to save the money for me after three weeks. I walked back again to De La Salle where they told me that they would schedule me for an exam a month down the road. In the meantime, I heard about another school , went there, took the exam and, miraculously, won a full four-year scholarship. After the celebrations, I remembered the P 3.00 so I went back to La Salle, again on foot, to reclaim it. There, I was told it was non-refundable. So, I walked the streets again but, somehow, the trip felt longer than ever before.
Today, I am honored to receive a doctorate, honoris causa, from La Salle for my work for the last two decades with scholars. Pardon my pride but I think I deserve this degree: I walked to La Salle and back 3 times and I paid P3.00 for this, 41 years in advance!
Seriously, I would like to thank De La Salle for granting me a doctorate degree in the humanities, honoris causa, and for giving me the privilege of addressing this gathering today.
May I have the honor of being among the first to congratulate the De La Salle University Class of 2005 for a job well done. You have earned the right to call yourselves with pride “LaSallians”, a name that evokes the excellence of your academic traditions and holds the promise of your future as leaders of our country and educators of the poor. May I now ask all the parents and loved ones of the graduates to please rise and remain standing. Graduates, let us give your parents and your loved ones a big hand in gratitude for their love and support throughout your years of study in La Salle. They are your heroes, the first ones in your life. Thank you. (Parents and loved ones, you may now sit down. Thank you.)
May I also acknowledge the presence among you today of a special group of teachers. Will the 30 joint scholars of the Natividad Galang Fajardo Foundation and De La Salle University please rise and remain standing. They are teachers from 17 public schools and the Philippine Normal University who will receive their Master of Arts degree in Education with you today , 5 with Distinction and 2 with High Distinction. They will go back to teaching jobs in public schools with lower salaries and longer work hours than in most of the private sector jobs but, I assure you, they are committed to, even passionate about, teaching the deserving poor. Indeed, these thirty “Bravehearts”, are true heroes of our country. Let us also give them a big hand. Thank you. (Scholars, you may now sit down. Thank you.)
My biggest hero is my mother, Natividad Galang-Fajardo, “Ima” as we called her in our native Pampango. Her family was her life. In 1955, she had a double-crisis. My father had a massive heart attack and was bed-ridden and jobless with big medical bills to pay for the next 12 years. If that was not enough, she had 9 children, the youngest being only 1 year old at the time. Things were so bad that her relatives offered to adopt some of us but she would have none of that. My mother drew on her faith and focused her energies on keeping her family together. She cooked “champorado” by the tub and sold it in a “kariton” beside the Quiapo church daily before the crack of dawn. She fried “lumpia” and “turon” by the hundreds which we then peddled all over Sta. Cruz district in the afternoon. She bought piglets in January, fattened them with our neighbors’ table scraps and sold the pigs in May for our school expenses. As poor as we were, she always had a coin or two for Mass, a mandatory weekly event for all of us when we had to wear our best clothes.
What sustained her was a vivid vision of a better life through education. Thanks to the free public school system, all nine of us reached high school. Thanks to scholarships, three of us finished college. She inspired all of us to believe in ourselves and to excel in anything we were doing which happened to be academics for me. In her 93 years with us, she never complained, never asked for anything for herself and always encouraged us to take care of others around us.
Growing up poor in Tondo, you develop a sense of stages in your life and your role in each. In the first stage, people take care of you. You have met two such heroes so far, your parents and your mentors, who taught you lovingkindness and compassion, critical thinking and a sense of mission. In the second, you learn to empower yourself by learning a trade. Here, you take care of yourself as you become your own hero. You look for either a scholarship to college or, failing that, you get a job quickly and study at night. In the third stage, you take care of others. You look after your younger siblings’ education, you take care of your own family, you support your parents in their old age and you care of anybody else who comes along the best way you can. The stages overlap, the years fly by so fast and life repeats itself as you become a “hero” to others.
Today, you have become full-fledged members of society, in the second stage of your life. From this day forward, you will take care of yourselves and learn a decent trade. You will learn to excel in whatever it is that drives you with a passion for that is the only way you will achieve any thing important in this world. Consider yourselves lucky, very lucky, that you are LaSallians. Your parents have the means to get you to the best school where you can get the best education along with the best minds and talents in the country. But, even now, you must be aware that, soon enough, you will have to take care of others around you. Because you have been gifted with so much, you will be responsible for a lot more.
Let me now show you who you are responsible for.
I am told that, in 2004, there were 7.7 million Filipinos working abroad, roughly 9.3% of our total population. If you add the undocumented ones, the percentage figure can easily rise to 10% of our total population. One out of every ten Filipinos is working outside the country! If each such Overseas Filipino Worker (“OFW”) has even only two dependents, that means nearly one out of every three Filipinos today depends on OFW remittances for their livelihood. For you to get a better appreciation of this diaspora, 2,378 Filipinos left every single day of 2003 to work abroad.
This exodus is the single biggest mass movement of workers in our century. It has and will continue to have major economic, social, political, and moral ramifications on the future character of our country and our people.
For some time now, OFWs have been carrying us on their shoulders. To begin with, our economy is totally dependent on OFW jobs to keep unemployment down and to maintain economic growth at a steady pace. The earnings of OFWs are probably the only thing keeping our economy afloat at this time. $ 8.55 Billion of annual remittances go a long way towards supporting families back home and shoring up the government’s dollar reserves to help service maturities from our $ 56 billion of foreign loans. The major growth sectors in our country today are principal beneficiaries of substantial expenditures by OFW dependents in housing, clothing, food and education. Clearly, OFWs are modern-day heroes of our country.
Like all else, there is a price to pay for all these. The Filipino family system is at risk. Almost one-third of our population is growing up without at least one parent: the absence of a mother or a father against the backdrop of available cash has strained our traditional family structure and values: we see broken marriages, second families, prostitution, out-of-school youth, drug addiction, among others, on the rise in the OFW sector.
It is no bed of roses either for the OFWs abroad: the women are the most vulnerable to human trafficking while the men take on some of the most dangerous jobs. If they escape these, many OFWs are forced to accept entry-level jobs because the quality of public school education back home has so deteriorated that they lack the professional skills to compete at higher job levels. Thus, every time a bomb goes off in Israel or a truck driver is kidnapped in Iraq or a maid is beaten up in Singapore, we hold our collective breath as a nation, fearing that yet another Filipino has been abused or, worse, that another Filipino is going home in a casket.
And still Filipinos continue to brave dangers and endure loneliness away from their families for a simple reason: we have collectively failed them. We have failed to create enough decent jobs to save them from a life of grinding poverty back home. We have failed to create a fair and just society, respectful of the rights of every man, woman and child and protective of our environment.
Every generation has a defining challenge. My generation was asked to reclaim democracy from a cruel dictatorship and to restore justice. We did get democracy back but we have failed so far to make it responsive to the needs of the people. The challenge for your generation today is to create enough decent jobs for a fast-growing population and to promote a better quality of life for all in a fair and just society. The personal challenge for you, of course, is to stay home, forego the “American Dream” of material comforts and cast your lot with our people. Your response to these challenges will define you and your generation; it will be the story of your life.
You need to prepare to move up to the third stage of your life wherein you begin to take care of others. This time, “others” will include not just your immediate family, not even just your La Salle family. You need to be a special kind of hero: you need to be a patriot, someone who loves an entire country, someone who takes it upon himself to be responsible for an entire people.
At the first level, patriotism is simply the awareness of and compassion for all of our countrymen; it is to be one with all Filipinos. It is a celebration of a common history and values with all people within the same shared space. It is an identification with an entire people, an affirmation of being part of a transcendental spirit animating all Filipinos so that we feel each other’s pain and we rejoice in each other’s triumphs.
Ateneans and La Sallites should not weep when they lose to each other in basketball games. They should weep, instead, for Christians and Moslems who are casualties in and refugees from the continuing conflict in Mindanao. We should raise funds not just for the annual Ateneo-La Salle athletic tournaments but for scholarships for the children of our neighbors right here in Leveriza who today are separated from the rich of La Salle not by the short distance of a few street meters but by the wall of poverty.
For a just society, we should teach our children at an early age that the poor and the ethnic minorities were not created by a lesser god but by the same God we worship. We should tell them that God is in our employees -- our drivers, our gardeners and our maids -- who, therefore, deserve the same respect and support as we give our own family for the blessings they give us in our daily lives.
At the second level, patriotism is creating vehicles of hope for one’s countrymen. It ennobles the national psyche. A poor man with a job is a happy leader and willing provider for a family. A bright student with a scholarship is a person with a future and a stake in our society.
LaSallians, do not to leave for work abroad. I can understand why poorly-educated Filipinos have to look for jobs abroad but not you. You are in the best position to start a business here or to start a professional career of your own with your La Salle education, your family finances and your personal connections. Do not just take a job, create a job! There are many business opportunities here for the bright, the hard-working, the creative and the patient: just ask the Koreans and the mainland Chinese businessmen who have been settling here in droves in search of a better life. Create jobs so that our OFWs have an option to stay home, be with their families and strengthen our institutions and values as a nation.
LaSallians, donate scholarships to the deserving poor and set to motion infinite circles of goodwill. The scholarship Mr. Jose B. Fernandez, Jr. gave me to the Ateneo de Manila University in 1964 has since grown, through the Natividad Galang-Fajardo Foundation, to 329 scholarships, 56 funded professorial chairs (of which 31 are in La Salle), several scholarship funds and one graduate school of mathematics education, among many others. Imagine the next circle. Right in your own home, provide scholarships to the children of your household staff. They, too, are your responsibility.
Better yet, donate a professorial chair. Adopt a public school teacher, buy her books, help her source a computer; make it your personal apostolate to encourage and to support her as she serves God and country in the trenches of public education. A typical teacher touches the lives of at least 5,000 students in a 25-year career. Her inspiration to our young, however, is forever: At 57, I still carry with me today values and lessons about life I learned from my teachers at F. Balagtas Elementary School and at Arellano (Public) High School half-a-century ago.
At the third and highest level, patriotism is sacrificing one’s own time, one’s career, and, if necessary, even one’s own life for love of country. LaSallians, trace a non-traditional path: pursue a service-oriented career.
Teach in state universities yourself, especially in the provinces where there is a scarcity of good Ph.D.’s. Work for the government and be a model of an honest, efficient and motivated civil servant for the sake of the masses who desperately need social services. Join NGOs to protect the environment, uphold human rights, teach population control to the poor, or safeguard the environment. In short, donate yourself to your country. Be a hero to the rest of us.
La Salle parents, please do not tell your graduate to become yet another Wharton MBA selling Citibank private banking products to already rich people in Asia. Allow him, instead, to make a meaningful career here. If he is good in Mathematics and if he loves teaching, why not grant him Ph.D. scholarship so that he can teach the poor? Forget the pay; by the mere fact that you have a LaSallian son, God has given you enough blessings already. Donate your son to the poor, as the Father gave us His Only Son. If you wish, hedge his bet:: give your own son a huge professorial chair so that he can better concentrate on his apostolic work. Encourage him daily. Affirm his decision.
For me, all three levels patriotism come so naturally. They are ingrained in the three stages of life in Tondo as we start with “heroes” who help us and become “heroes” to others later on. Patriotism begins with my mother’s love for her children and expands into her children sharing her love with all Filipinos through our Foundation. “Inang” in Tagalog and “Ima” in Pampango represent to me all that is caring, loving, noble, and worth sacrificing oneself for. The Philippines, our country, is my “Inang Bayan”, my mother’s land, my motherland. It is the home of my heroes, my mother and my teachers. Now, it is the home of my own family -- my wife and my two sons. Everything that I am, I developed here; everything that I have, I earned here. Why should I be selfish ? “ Bakit ako magmamaramot ? ” And so I expand my mother’s love for me and my love for my mother to my love for my own country. Thus, I am responsible for all my countrymen. I am a Filipino. I am responsible for all Filipinos.
And so are you, too, my dear graduates. You are not LaSallians, you are more than that. You are Filipinos. Therefore, love your country as you love your own mother and as your mother loves you.
And so, my dear graduates, go forth into the world. Write a good life story. Be a hero. Be a Filipino.
My mother be with you. LaSalle be with you. Our country be with you. God be with you.
Maraming salamat po sa inyong lahat. Pagpalain tayong lahat ng Diyos.
