Illustrating The Indomitable Human Spirit

For many years, Vicky C. toiled tirelessly to keep a family fed and sheltered, doing odd jobs as they were made available to her. Cooking for other families, cleaning houses, and caring for the disabled or the elderly, using skills and expertise borne out of many years of trying to keep pace with the almost-unending needs of a growing family of several children. While the grueling years may show unmistakable signs of wear and tear in Vicky’s physical looks, still it cannot be denied that she has kept her family together and sufficiently cared for.

But the persistent urge to succeed in life and to try to give her still struggling family more in life than it has been used to, Vicky thought and tried of every possible way to bring this uplift about. In the process, she had to have realized that her depleting ability to care for her family, converting essentially manual labor in exchange for resources for her family, would not last for long. So she started focusing on economic endeavors that would generate revenue that would more than keep her family’s soul together. Entrepreneurship that has proved for many to be key to improving one’s lot under a capitalist system.

She had reminisced about the times the family had when they were settled in another city and both husband and wife were employed in a thriving bakery shop. The husband had worked as baker while Vicky tended to cashiering; and they had thought then that the family was on its way to some real progress. But as fate would have it, the bakery burned down and with it, the family’s hopes were also dashed to cinders.

Before long, the family found itself in a another city in Mindanao, in Cagayan de Oro City, with the family trying to parlay what experiences it had collectively acquired to support the family. But as expected when one’s enterprising efforts are bereft of the main lifeblood, capital, Vicky and her penurious family did not garner much headway, consigning Vicky to taking on whatever jobs were available.

Vicky came to our lives as a caregiver for my disabled mom who had spent over a decade in the US with us. Realizing too late the disastrous effects drastic change in climate may have especially on the elderly, one of my mom’s legs had to be amputated due to problems of circulation. Thus, she was back to the old homeland for proper caring. Vicky stayed on with the family till my mom died several years ago, taking on miscellaneous odd jobs. As a cook for which she had special skills, cleaning house, and taking an 8-hour shift caring for my mom who had given up on moving about on her own.

It was then that we learned of Vicky’s commendable plan for her family. While the odd jobs did provide some measure of care for her family, they offered no long term benefit and their ability to provide was inversely proportional to her ability to do tedious physical work.

While compassion and good wishes could ease a bit another person’s lament and problems, nothing beats real concrete assistance to start a needy but motivated person on his way toward resolution. And we know the one direst lack of the needy is the ability to raise capital funds, beyond just to spend to keep family alive. And we also know that mainstream institutions designed to provide assistance for such persons have practically closed their doors, arguing about bad risks and the absence of proper collaterals.

Sensing the noteworthiness of Vicky’s dreams and believing in her integrity and resoluteness, we started helping her out, at the same time that we also did with the two other caregivers who lost jobs when my mom died. And in the ensuing several years, Vicky would prove that she was made of sterner stuff, as the two others simply made themselves rare and never once getting back to us to explain how the “loaned” funds did for their little endeavors. We have come to accept their failures and continue to have compassion and good wishes for them.

Over time, Vicky, her husband, and a couple of her kids, having eventually “borrowed” 70,000 pesos, started crystallizing their bakery business. Humbly starting with a home-made oven with the husband cooking and making deliveries and Vicky helping out in the sales, their entire house has become a beehive of activity. From the funds provided, the business was able to purchase a good-size professionally made oven, construct a little store shed to display bakery products and complemented with a meager selection of her own cooking and some soda products, and even rent the neighboring unoccupied building now in turn leased out to roomers and housing her bakers now numbering six.

Can we consider Vicky’s plight as more than just a turn for the better, like a success?

Well, the acquired high standards of polite society may squirm a bit in judging her strides. After all, their house premises which are also the bakery’s place of business are still dark, dilapidated, hot and humid, and would be considered dirty by most health standards; though improvements are slowly being introduced. Some walls are now hollow-blocked and the floor having being upgraded from simply being made of dirt.

But one must feel in this case that the greater, more enduring and laudable changes and/or manifestations have been inside the persons involved. Documented solely by a signed hand-written piece of paper, the “loan” with no interest is slowly being retired, commencing from the middle of last year. The installments have reduced the total amount to 80%.

Though far from liquidation, there is earnest optimism that eventually the borrowed funds will be completely retired, giving credence to the experience-proved truism that the needy by and large only need to be given the opportunity; and that outright charity or pure dole-out is typically not the answer.

CREATING A REAL DIFFERENCE

That noble message in bold prominent letters was etched on the annual General Assembly reports as the dominant theme for 2007 of the industry’s number one and biggest open-community type multi-purpose cooperative. A quite bold and rightfully-deserved theme for a once insignificant credit union that now celebrates its 52nd year of existence.

How surprisingly refreshing to chance upon a little bright bloom from the current grisly mire of negativism pervading the social and political landscape of a beleaguered country teeming with punditry that caters in wholesale unproductive rhetoric about what is wrong with the country in particular, and with the rest of the world in general. Abundant postulations, prognostications, detailed analytical dismantling of most anything and everything seen, but with hardly any constructive prognoses and actuations that will begin to address the gargantuan concerns besetting the citizenry, on a case by each case, one person at a time basis.

Yet from very inauspicious beginnings in July 8, 1954, birthed as the ACCU (Ateneo Cooperative Credit Union) in the then idyllic city of Cagayan de Oro, located in Northern Mindanao, and commencing with share capital of only 26.30 pesos, this community uplift undertaking has blossomed into something that will stagger even the most vocal and virulent among those who peddle negativism daily in the local blogosphere.

This multipurpose cooperative, now famously known as FICCO (First Community Cooperative, and now designed and registered to serve the entire country) has metamorphosed in to an almost 2 billion peso organization, with about 90,000 members at the end of 2006; and forecasted to register in 2007 2.5 billion in assets and 110,333 members, with increases at 32% and 24% respectively.

And to illustrate the redoubtable clout and deep community penetration of this undertaking, it carried in its books total loans of 1.5 billion pesos at the end of 2006, and projected at about 2 billion pesos for 2007. It is good to note that for 2006 loan releases amounted to 2.1 billion pesos.

But is it profitable? Can regular folks – teachers, drivers, market vendors, small entrepreneurs, etc, be trusted not only to faithfully follow a savings regimen, but also be counted upon to make good on loan accommodations?

Suffice it to say that the cooperative has always been stellarly profitable, and the last year was no exception.

For 2006, it registered net surplus for distribution to the tune of 118 million pesos, 70% of which were distributed to members as interests for deposit accounts, dividends on share capital, and patronage refunds to loan clients. Typically, 95% of the 70% are devoted to interests and dividends, while 5% for patronage refunds.

It was therefore with eager anticipation that I had my passbooks updated after an absence and dormancy of accounts for over a year. Needless to state, the increments were rather substantial, definitely better than what one would get for funds invested in other private financial institutions.

As an active member of FICCO since the 70’s, one finds some difficulty being quiet and reticent about the effectiveness and feasibility of this collective effort in its avowed purposes aimed at poverty alleviation, with emphasis on both development of a propensity to save and the integrity and mature commitment in discharging responsibilities with regard to credit accommodations.

As an equivalent shout at the rooftops, one cannot imagine the cluelessness and seeming ignorance of many pundits, government technocrats, and even in your typical highly-intelligent but dismally reality-aware pundits who ceaselessly harangue the blogosphere with endless rhetoric about what is wrong with the country and what should be done according to their idealized analyses.

Duh! Slow down and smell the coffee. You, too, may be able to participate in something constructive however puny or powerless one may feel about the overwhelmingly pervasive poverty conditions of the country. It is never that utterly hopeless. Most times meaningful solutions are within arm’s length of most everybody.

It does require great humility, and some real sweat equity, to climb down from one’s high perch of empty rhetoric, down to the levels of real actions, sometimes dirty, or insignificant or inconsequential, and do not derive much public notice to stoke one’s egotistical designs.

My exhortation? Contribute toward creating a real difference. In your own little ways.

UPDATE

The weekend dated March 11th witnessed the 11th and final general assembly comprising the members of the cooperative banking with the main office, held in a cavernous gym in the city’s polytechnic school. It was a rather well-attended affair which proudly reflected the over 10,000 main office clients.

For the sake of convenience and to accommodate the over 90,000 members scattered throughout many areas of Mindanao, it has been deemed proper after all these many years to hold different general assembly meetings in different locations. A truly admirable concept to bring cooperativism wherever it is needed.

Democracy being a rather unpredictable and at times messy affair, the assembly which was scheduled from 8 am to 12 noon went way passed schedule; and though the gym felt like it was filled to the rafters, scores of people milled outside. The much-awaited climax for the affair was the distribution of dividends which was purposely left as the last item for the agenda. And getting almost 11% p.a. for one’s investments was well worth the wait.

An MSM Profile of Michelle Malkin – finally

Maybe the glare has become too bright to be ignored. So finally, the arguably liberally-biased MSM have to acknowledge the public shining light of a Michelle Malkin, with this article in the Washington Post.

One needs to read the entire article to derive a sense of how significant the lady’s courage, strengths, and accomplishments are in the new adopted country that her parents brought her into.

Captain Ed at Captains Quarters was among the first to weigh in with this added tribute.

And over at always scholarly, dependable, and respectable PowerLine comes this little reaction, among other things humbly acknowledging Michelle's real journalistic background.

From the suddenly popular blog cum video site Hot Air, where Michelle regularly displays her video media persona, comes this little friendly defense and support for her, laced by and augmented with a lot of readers' varied commentaries, giving one a good well-rounded glimpse of the person.

Of course liberal sites, like Wonkette, also waste no time trying to muddy the waters, even taking snipes at the WaPo writer, H. Kurtz, most likely because he wasn't sufficiently negatively predisposed toward the subject and what she does.

And fellow liberal blogger, Atrios, had this to say as his version of his racist comment mentioned in the article.

I did not have time to visit and read all the reactions to the WaPo article, but do visit and see who was moved either to comment to, or write for or against, this article from Memeorandum.

To the Maglalang family, congratulations on a job well done.

Old Coin Reveals Truth?

On this day for lovers, did your mind wander to antiquity to magically conjure the classical image of star-crossed love in the persons of Egyptian Pharaoh Cleopatra and Roman Officer Mark Anthony?

Well, time to reset, or Ctrl/Alt/Delete.

Archeology has once again exposed the fantasized Hollywoodization of history's famous lovers.

Cleopatra - "beautiful seductress with goddess-like looks"?

Far from it and perish the thought.

What about - "a shallow forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and a witch-like nose"?

Click to read more.

Bring Father To Work Day

Welcome to the office!

The other day was Bring Father To Work Day for me with one of my sons. Though, very unofficially and with hardly any notice, it was a day nevertheless honored and commemorated by the both of us and my son’s immediate superior or superiors. For that day was tagged as ride-along day for me in my son’s CHP patrol car. A little-known practice that actually is encouraged by the agency, to get the general public introduced to and acquainted with its functions and responsibilities. And maybe as part of its public relations agenda, for after all the public is its main concern and employer. Thus, as I understand it aside from promoting it among family members, members of media may also participate; and as told, have indeed participated in the past.

As a life-long motorist on our freeways and byways, the eight-hour experience was quite an eye-opener for me. While many of us as motor vehicle drivers can proudly point to our own years of hardened experiences navigating through the many freeways thereabouts, we tend to forget that it has always been essentially from the narrow perspective of a motorist. And not from other equally relevant perspectives. Take the example of the people whose critical task it is to maintain the roadworthiness and the integrity of the freeway system, and the people who are engaged to keep them free from litter, debris, and the ubiquitous conked-out vehicles hugging the shoulders.


Please have a seat.

And what about those whose sworn responsibility is to keep the freeways safe by ensuring that motorists follow traffic rules and regulations when using them? For after all, traffic rules and regulations are intended to ensure public safety. These specific duties fall on the able shoulders of the patrol officers in the black-and-white cruisers or motorbikes. They inhabit the freeway system using them in a manner of speaking as their offices, where they preside over its orderly and smooth functioning and the rigorous daily task of directing motorists to and from their destinations in the most efficient and accident-free manner possible.

All these people also use the freeways, but see them from totally different prisms.

Needless to state, the freeways can be perilous and at times fatal places for any motorist while driving, being stranded, or worse, figuring in any high-speed accident. And in this perpetually fluid and fast-moving environment where danger lurks at every moment and turn, the people tasked in ensuring safety engage and wager their own personal welfare and their lives on a daily basis, come rain or shine, night or day, fog or clear day.

And one salient observation that stubbornly sticks to mind to this day is how hazardous if must be for these officers to be doing what they do each day. For they are not only asked to be skillfully precise drivers, arguably more skillful than your typical fast-lane-hogging motorist, but they also have to be literally multi-taskers because of what is required of them while driving their patrol cars at high speed. With eyes peeled to the road and one hand steady on the wheel, the other hand may find itself either operating the radio and carrying a conversation, or keyboarding on the mobile PC, or operating either the installed radar or the new portable one.


Excuse me, while I attend to work.

And in a very real way, one senses that at times, these officers must find themselves in some kind of catch-22 situations. For to catch up and to direct/guide out of traffic (typically away from the fast/cruising lane) an errant driver who is dangerously over-speeding and improperly weaving in and out of lanes, the pursuing officer has to somehow mimic that motorist’s moves. That is, go at even higher and riskier speed to catch up, and similarly weave in and out of lanes fast. Imagine yourself pursuing a motorist going at 80mph in the midst of a dizzying maze of cars going at different speeds and you are a couple of hundred yards behind him , you’d have to initially accelerate beyond 80mph just to catch up and skillfully maneuver to get behind him to guide him out of traffic.

These and more have given me some new-found appreciation and gratitude for those hardy officers who do very hazardous work on a daily basis. In which a typical day in the office must require one to always be 110% alert and able. And we have not been delved here on the possible life-threatening hazards a routine traffic stop may escalate into because of unpredictable criminal behavior that may enter into the equation.