BIRTHDAY RUN-RAISER: Running it Forward for Fatima Integrated Farm School

September 11 is a day with a lot of historical significance, either bad or good, depending on one's own point of view. 

Of course, who would forget the September 11 attacks in the year 2001 at the World Trade Center in New York  City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia that killed almost 3,000 people and triggered a War on Terror which to this day still rears its ugly murderous head in all parts of the globe.  There is also the day in the year 9 A.D. which marked the end of the Battle of Teutoborg Forest where the great Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history.  In the year 1697, Sept 11 saw the Battle of Vienna where a Christian Coalition forces, including the famed Winged Hussars, lifted the siege of the great city by the Ottoman forces. 

Here in the Land of the Morning, the date   has been controversial of late with the passage in the House of Representatives  of House Bill No. 7137 declaring Sept 11 as special non-working holiday in Ilocos Norte to celebrate the birth anniversary of President Ferdinand Marcos. As expected, human rights groups and civil society lambasted such legislation as a "blatant act of historical revisionism." 

Here in our family residence, Sept 11 is a day to celebrate the birthday of our dearly departed father and yours truly. It is a double celebration.  I could just imagine the day in 1966 when our mother gave birth to me, thereby gifting her husband (our father), on his birthday,  a bouncing baby boy.  Dare we add, a bouncing & running baby boy. 

Which brings us to the real subject of this blog article. It is not about history. Far from it.  The subject is more about a wish for a bit of altruism. As defined, altruism is the principle or practice of unselfish concern for the welfare of others.  There is much debate among academics and scientists whether human nature is fundamentally selfish or altruistic. Would like to think that altruism is an essential part of being human and as basis for this kind of thinking, the smart ones would point to the critical fact that humans could not have survived in nature without the charity and social reciprocity of a group. 

That wish for a bit of altruism came about a a few days  ago  when a good friend from my school days asked me what are my plans for my birthday.  Jokingly I replied "medyo tumatanda na, kaya magpapakabait na."  But immediately, and in a serious tone, added "have been thinking of how, in a small and modest way, I can be of help to others". 

Help others.  But who?  And how?

An article in Rappler  in late summer this year has been in my mind for quite some time already. It talks about how the pandemic has highlighted  a stark divide in basic education:  access for those who can afford and those who can't. The article quoted a public elementary school teacher in Laguna (who had 42 students from 2019 but now only 20 have expressed interest in enrolling for this school year) as saying:  "Yung bills nila tumambak dahil sa lockdown so ang priority nila ay makahanap ng work. Kung baga sa ngayon hindi nila priority ang education."

That was in May and in late July, the Department of Education has released data showing that 21.7 million have enrolled in public and private schools nationwide for the academic year 2020-2021. According to DepEd Secretary, the total number of enrollees is 77% of total number of students for the school year 2019-2020.  What happened to the  6.5 million schoolchildren not enrolled? That is not a small number.  That number is practically the whole population of a developed country like Denmark or Singapore. 

The missing "6.5 million children" truly highlights the severe need of significant assistance  for the basic education sector: its schools, its teachers, and its students. 

There is a school that I wish to help.  Hoping and praying too that others may help.   This is the Fatima Integrated Farm School, Inc.  (FIFSI)  in Iriga City.  It is not a public school but a non-profit private school. But unlike the typical private schools, some of which  at times are portrayed as the domicile of rich and privileged kids, FIFSI is actually a school inside the compound of a center for youth  and its student population is a mix of orphans who are residents in  the center  and kids outside the center, some of whom come from an indigenous community in the mountain.  

Let us look closer into the story of FIFSI.  

The Fatima Integrated farm School started in 1995 as an elementary school.  It became a high school by 1999. Since then, the school has produced  726 high school graduates as of the latest count. Many of the graduates earn scholarships from colleges and universities in Bicol like the Ateneo de Naga and the University of Saint Anthony (USAnt).  There are already graduates of FIFSI that have earned  college degrees and have become engineers, teachers, policemen, army soldiers, accountants, computer technicians and HRM workers. 

Pupils  of the Fatima Integrated Farm School writing sweet messages for their teachers at the Freedom Wall  in celebration of Teachers' Day. 

Parents meeting at FIFSI last year. There is a meeting every quarter of the school year. 

The Bicolano Penguin was a guest speaker at the Graduation Ceremonies  of  FIFSI a couple years back. 

FIFSI is located inside the compound of the  center for youth   and roughly 15% of its student population are from the orphanage.  The name of the center  is the  Fatima Center for Human Development and it is located in San Agustin, Iriga City.  It is in a rural place whose residents mostly have an agricultural livelihood. The Fatima Center was started in 1975 by two Augustinian sisters, Sr. La Salle Baysa and Sr. Felicitas de Lima, who were part of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines in the 1970s.  The Fatima Center is home to around 100 to 150 youth  (orphans,  children from families to poor to feed them, the children of Negritos living on Mount Iriga, and disturbed children).  

Orphans attending a mass at the chapel inside the Fatima Center. 

To have an idea as to what the children do in Fatima Center, allow me to share the words in 2012  of the late Dennis Murphy,  a former Jesuit priest who was a community organizer. He was a former member of the Board of Trustees of Fatima Center: 

"Sr. Felicitas and a small group of young sisters provide love, food, education and a true home for these children of the poor.  The children care for one another; they all learn a marketable skill.  They finish high school and go to college.  They learn how to raise pigs, and plant fruit trees and vegetables in the most modern ways. They pray together and play together  and help one another, and smile and sing. Being there among the children for a few days is a taste of the peace and camaraderie that life should have for all.   Sister Felicitas' center has a motto:  "We make useless things useful."  It is inelegant, but the sisters really do just that: They begin with the poorest and least promising of rural children and fashion them into fine young adults."

To know more about the school, I messaged Sr Felicitas, who is my auntie as she is a younger  sister of my father, a couple of questions. Here is our Q&A:

Bicolano Penguin (BP):  When you started the Fatima Integrated Farm School in 1995, what was the rationale?

Sr. Felicitas:  Originally, prior to the school, we are having non-formal education for our orphans. Children were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and catechesis. Some of them leave  the orphanage but we cannot give them credentials because we are not recognized.  It was then that we applied for permit from the Dept of Education (Dep Ed) to operate the kindergarten to Grade 6. We were also reflecting very seriously about the potential of the poor to acquire basic education. 

BP:  Looking back now in 2020, what do you think is the significant contribution/impact of the school to the community. 

Sr. Felicitas:  Our children are showing academic excellence when contested with other private schools like USAnt, La Consolacion College, University of Northeastern Philippines, and others.  In fact, we won the regional contest for journalism.  Likewise in the Girl Scout of the Philippines, first time in Iriga City that the president for Southern Luzon came from FIFSI. Our High School graduates are showing academic excellence when they go to college. Our Valedictorian for example graduated cum laude at the Ateneo de Naga. Currently, two of our students are enjoying full scholarships at USAnt.  I am so inspired that the poor when given opportunities can be great assets in community development.

Had a chance to converse with a high school classmate, Popoy Reganit, who was the  Dean of the College of Education at the Ateneo. Popoy is a passionate advocate of pushing for the further improvement of education in the Bicol region. A number of times, he has seen the graduates of FIFSI studying at the Ateneo  and he replied to me  when asked  on how the FIFSI has helped the community in all these years it has been operating:  "Fatima Integrated Farm School helps a lot.  One concrete example is our class valedictorian and now an accountant."   

For its Senior high School program, FIFSI offers two tracks. Under the Academic track, there is the General Academic Strand (GAS). For the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood track, the FIFSI students can choose Automotice, Bread & Pastry, Agri Fishery and Home Economics. 

Understandably, the Fatima Integrated Farm School is affected by the Covid19 pandemic which has resulted in the postponement of the opening of the SY 2020-2021 from Aug 24 to Oct 3.  The number of enrollees for the current school year is at 484.  Mirroring the national situation, this number is about 71% of the comparative number of enrollees of the previous academic year. 

Despite the postponement of the start of the school year, the school continues to pay the salaries of its personnel which  includes 30 teachers and 9 support staff since the ECQ months.  It has been a struggle and the school administration and the teachers have been working closely together as team to persevere in these challenging times. 

In addition, the Fatima Integrated Farm School has been most understanding of the economic situation of the families of its  students.  The monthly tuition fee for grade  school students in FIFSI is actually only Php 40 higher than the Daily Minimum Wage  of an agricultural workers in Region 5 (Bicol). But given the times of an economic recession in the whole country and rising unemployment, there are parents who are unable to come up with the cash for enrollment.  But social justice exists in the hearts of the Augustinian nuns who administer the school, so they have  offered flexible and practical solutions.  Check out this notice on the release of books to the students.

So this is the school I wish to help. This is the school I will be asking running friends, schoolmates, officemates and relative to help. How?

There are very very few things in life I am good at and running is one of them. Not fast running but long distance running.  I may not be fast and I may often be the last one to cross the finish line of a running event but I truly like running for long periods. Longer than your average weekend warrior runner. 

Handing over a check donation for the Fatima Center to Sr. Felicitas de Lima in 2018.   BP was joined by fellow 83neans and row5runners. 

Given that, I plan to use running to raise funds for FIFSI. Hence the name Run-Raiser. I have used running in a couple of occasions to raise cash for the orphanage. But this time,  the plan is to raise a bigger amount than before. What is the plan?

The plan for the Run-Raiser is to invite running friends, schoolmates, officemates and relatives to remit money to the bank account that will be provided by FIFSI.  As soon as the amount is confirmed to have been credited to the bank account, FIFSI will issue a receipt and this will be provided to the generous donor. In turn, the Bicolano Penguin will run the distance of the amount donated using an exchange rate of 1 km per Php 1,000. Since the money will be remitted in various dates (and I certainly hope and pray that there will be various  remittances), the BP will be running multiple days starting Sep 4 up to Sep 11. For more details, a Facebook group page (BP Birthday Run-Raiser)  has been created for viewing by interested  donors.  Also, anyone interested to help can message me at Bicolano Penguin facebook page .   

Paying it forward  is doing something good for someone else without expecting anything in return. There are many ways to Pay it Forward and it  includes myriad small gestures that create a ripple effect of kindness.  The Bicolano Penguin chooses to run it forward as the Sep 11 birthday approaches. In doing this endeavor, I am inspired and guided by the values I have learned in our home, in the schools I have attended , and in the companies I work.  Values such as integrity and social justice; ideals such as "men for others" and "profit with honor." 

To all those who will join in me in this Run-Raiser for Fatima Integrated Farm School, thank you very much for believing that "...small acts when multiplied by millions of people, can literally change the world for the better."

Dakulang pasasalamat. Dios mabalos. 

  

                  

         

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