WHAT’S the most difficult thing you’ve done to help another?
I had the chance in the last three weeks to listen to some wonderful examples, thanks to the opportunity to join a search committee for the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation’s Triennial Awards. Most of us first read the individual finalists’ stories about a year ago, but interacting with them has made their stories more compelling.
Take Dr. Roel Cagape, who runs several clinics in General Santos City and Sarangani Province, then spends most of his weekends on medical missions in Malapatan town. To get there, he spends 9-10 hours traveling, more than half of it on foot, and crosses 28 rivers. Yet it’s not just these feats of endurance that set Dr. Cagape apart. He has also devised innovative solutions to bring health care to remote communities, particularly the B’laan tribe. One of these is training community-based volunteers to interview those who are ill and then, using a set of codes, text Dr. Cagape the symptoms. He then responds with the instructions or codes referring to the medicine already stored in the community. That’s just one of his many projects. He draws sustenance from St. Ignatius’ prayer for generosity, which includes the petition to learn “to labor and not to seek reward.”
Like Dr. Cagape, district supervisor Sarah Pasion Cubar of Kapalong, Davao del Norte serves a community of indigenous people. From 2010 to 2016, she worked to open 15 schools that, to date, have served at least 3,000 children in the Ata-Manobo, Mandaya, and Dibabawon communities. She emphasizes that it was a team effort; that government officials, school heads, the military, and local communities built all these schools together. But her charm and drive, her refusal to take no for an answer, are apparent. Part of what drives her is the memory of dropping out of school after the fifth grade, working for seven years to help her family, then finally making it to college after a placement test. She has since earned a master’s degree in education and arranged for scholarships so that others could earn degrees, like she did.
Finalist Norlan Pagal, 47, has been fishing since he was nine. After dropping out of school in the fourth grade, this is how he has made a living in San Remigio, where he is now a fish warden and barangay councilman. Pagal has seen his daily catch dwindle over the years, but instead of wringing his hands or finding some other way to make a living, he chose to learn about the laws that govern marine resources and to volunteer for the Bantay Dagat. Thrice from 2010 to 2015, he survived attacks on his life. But a gunshot wound in the latest attack in October 2015 paralyzed him from the waist down. It didn’t stop Pagal. He spends his days on the shores of Anapog, his binoculars aimed at the marine sanctuary before him, and he summons help if illegal fishers encroach there.
Apart from supporting his family and sending five children to school, Mateo Quilas has spent more than 20 years campaigning for government at all levels in Bohol to help persons with disabilities (PWDs). He has done that despite the loss of his eyesight at age 33. An organization of PWDs that he began in 1998 with 11 other individuals now has more than 8,000 members, some of whom speak up for PWDs in 47 Bohol towns. “Fighting spirit” is one trait the 59-year-old considers among his strengths. It has sustained him through long commutes and falls inside poorly designed government buildings; it has sent him back repeatedly to the offices of mayors and other local officials, even when some of them didn’t want to help at first. Quilas simply wore them down. “No retreat,” he says. “No surrender.” He is driven by a need to keep PWDs from begging.
Nobility, too, is something Dr. Benedict Edward Valdez, 47, wants to emphasize. While “selling nobility” isn’t easy, the trauma surgeon from Davao City has found “a controllable number of volunteers” in his three areas of service. He operates for free on persons with cleft lips and palates (which would otherwise cost them P120,000); has set up and still refines training and systems to improve pre-hospital care as medical director of the Davao 911 Emergency Medical Services; and seeks improvements in the quality of emergency medical and trauma services. Dr. Valdez began as a volunteer 22 years ago for the Maharlika Charity Foundation, of which he is now president. “In 30 minutes,” he says of the free surgeries he provides, “you can change a life.”
What compels people to give so much of their energy to help others? Not an excess of time or wealth, but a choice not to wallow in personal difficulties, and to look outward instead, on other people whose lives they can make better. What these exemplary individuals share is an ability to inspire and organize. There is also the sense that they no longer see their work as a sacrifice, but as the privilege of serving others. Their work, while difficult, sustains them.