TEN
OUTSTANDING STUDENTS OF THE PHILIPPINES
NCR
AWARDING CEREMONIES
KEYNOTE
SPEECH
VICKY
P. GARCHITORENA
MAY 6 2013
First, let me thank and
congratulate RFM Foundation, RFM Corporation, PLDT, CHED for continuing this wonderful program of
identifying outstanding students in the country. It is a program that has
inspired thousands of young men and women across the country to live up to the
values and principles of the program – ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE, LEADERSHIP, AND
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY. I am amazed that the program is now handled by the TOSP
Alumni Community of NCR, a testament to your leadership and program management
capabilities. Congratulations to all of you! I hope you invite me to join your community,
as I would love to recruit all of you for my various advocacies.
Congratulations of
course to the TOSP finalists in the National Capital Region. It is a singular
honor that I hope you will treasure the rest of your lives.
Congratulations to the parents, whose love and concern and devotion
must have inspired you to be the best you can be. They must also be bursting with pride at your
accomplishments.
And of course
congratulations are in order for the teachers who, I am certain played an important
role in your development. I myself was inspired especially by two teachers. The
first was a small Ilocana nun who taught me the importance of discipline in
terms of punctuality, as well as physical and mental discipline. The second was
my English teacher in college, who gently prodded us to excellence and made
clear her disappointment when we didn’t give our very best.
Looking now into the
bright young eyes of our finalists, I think about how fortunate you are to be
living in this day and age. You know infinitely more things today than we knew
when we graduated 49 years ago. You have all the information in the whole wide
world at your fingertips through the Internet and your mobile phones. At the click of a mouse or the
swipe of your finger, you can learn about all the technological advances being made today - into space, into the depths of the oceans,
into our brains, into the very fabric of matter.
But I hope you realize
that, despite what you know today, you are always a work in progress. Tomorrow
next week, next year, there will be new information, and sometimes the truth as
we know it today will have been debunked as myth tomorrow. And no matter how
much you think you know, there is always more you do not.
To share with you my
own experience. I graduated summa cum
Laude in BSPhysics and thought I knew enough. But when I reported for work at
the Philippine Atomic Research Center – that egg-shaped building just to the
left of Commonwealth Avenue on the way to UP – I realized that I had no idea
about what I was supposed to do in the program called neutron diffraction
analysis! Siyempre Hindi Ako nagpahalata!
I listened very carefully to everything my boss would say, read all the books
they gave me, and learned fast!
So whatever it is you
learned in college, it may well be
obsolete by the time you enter the workplace. The dizzying speed with which new
information is being disseminated, the technological revolutions that are being
created as we speak, imposes on us a discipline – to learn to cull from the all
that information what is the truth; then to use that information to create
knowledge; and from knowledge develop wisdom.
But while you continue
to expand your understanding of the nature and depth and breadth of your area
of expertise, do not limit yourself to that strength. I’m sure that most of you
have other interests – music perhaps, or baking, or photography, or something
other than your college degree. Continue to nurture that as well. You never
know where destiny will lead you.
And while destiny may
open certain doors or windows for you,
the choice is always yours. Because you are bright, eager, young kids at the
threshold of your future, many opportunities will present themselves to you as
you go through life. Take the time to examine each one as it comes along and
make your decisions as wisely as you can.
My own career has
zigged and zagged all over the place.
I’ve been a Physics
researcher, parlayed my writing skills as Communications Manager at SGV, used what I learned at SGV to become a corporate
executive, resigned to become a full time street parliamentarian to protest the
Marcos dictatorship, volunteered as Director
of Museo ng Malacanang, ran for congress
on the request of then President Cory, became a radio and tv host of public service programs, NGO leader, cabinet secretary, and, now in my retirement, am the Vice President for the Women’s wing of
the Liberal Party in order to develop and empower women and women’s
organizations.
How did I do all
that?
I continuously reinvented myself in response to the challenges and opportunities
that presented themselves to me. I also believe that the Holy Spirit has moved
in my life every time I needed to
shift careers or make important decision, as when I resigned from my
positions top CEO of a number of
companies in order to bring democracy back to our country. But always, even as
I was a full time professional and attended to my growing family, I was also
always involved in what was happening in the
country. I often volunteered for elections, for orphanages, for
political activism, and for the church.
So whatever path you
take, whether you stay on the path you are on today – as doctor, accountant,
sociologist, artist – I wish to share with you the principles that I have lived
by. Some of them have been highlighted by many of you in your responses to the
questions posed to you by the TOSP search committee. They sound simple but will help you in almost any
situation and in almost any decision you have to make in life.
1.
Be a lifelong learner. Read good books, watch
documentaries, listen to debates, attend
conferences and seminars. Learn about things that are outside your comfort
zone. You’ll be amazed at how seemingly
disconnected information can lead you to marvelous insights through leaps of
intuition or by your brain just connecting the dots you may not even know
existed. Listen carefully to your elders, your bosses, to your colleagues, and even
to your staff. You will be amazed at how much you can learn from them.
2.
Work hard at everything you do, even
when the boss is absent or no one is looking.
Be totally committed to any job you take on, whether as an employee, an
executive, or a volunteer. Don’t hold back. It will show in the quality of your
work, and you will be truly appreciated by those around you.
3.
Do more than is expected of you. Stretch
yourself to your limits, and you will be surprised to find out that you can do
more than you thought you could. You will never know how far you can run until
you run a marathon. That’s how athletes become giants in their sports. They run
faster, jump higher, shoot farther and work hard to doing better the next day.
4.
Don’t think small. Think big! If you
think small, you might be a small success, but you have been given the
qualities of a leader. Don’t just change
things; transform them! You can do it! If I might share with you an example
from my life. In 2000, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II and I were looking for
the most strategic program we could undertake to improve the quality of public
education in the country. After some discussions, we decided that it was to
make our public high school students computer and internet literate. At that
time, only about 3% of public high schools had internet. So we set for
ourselves what is called a “hairy audacious goal” of putting computers with
internet access in ALL 5,445 schools.
We
knew this was a tall order, and one we could not do on our own. So we convened
what we called a Multisectoral Social Consortium composed of the national government
(Department of Education), the telecommunications companies, including the
competitors of Globe (which proved that companies can rise above their
commercial goals for the national
interest), local governments for matching funds, and even the Filipino-American
community to give back to their hometowns. It was a huge success! We raised
more than P300million and were able to connect about 3,600 public high schools,
transforming a whole generation of underprivileged Filipino youth into computer
and internet literate men and women more able to work with the technology that
has become as ubiquitous as paper and pencil. It was at that time the largest
private-sector led program in public education and was then taken over by the
DepEd to mainstream it into their budget.
5.
Strive for excellence in everything you
do. Anything less diminishes you. Give it your best. Even God cannot ask for
more. Excellence is a mark of a leader. No one wants to follow someone whom
they cannot look up to. Even corporations build their brands by achieving
excellence in their products and services. It is often their competitive
advantage.
6.
Continuously develop every aspect of
your persona – intellectually, socially, culturally, politically. Develop a
sense of intellectual curiosity, asking questions, dissecting points of view,
engaging in deep conversations and debate. Be open to changing your opinion if you realize that you are
wrong. Develop your business and social networks. They are a key factor in your
future success. Create your own data base and constantly update and expand it
as you meet new people.
7. Above all, protect your
integrity, no matter what. Trust is the most important character trait that
everyone looks for – in a friend, in a spouse, in an employee, in a boss, in a
leader. Once destroyed, it is almost impossible to rebuild. Never, ever lose
your idealism. And for this, you need the TOSP community to help you hold fast
to your moral compass. You will be faced with many challenges, temptations,
that might be hard to resist. It helps if you have friends who believe in you
and who can remind you of your dreams and your values.
8.
Because you are outstanding young men
and women, be engaged in the life of our country and our people. You have been
blessed with qualities not found in ordinary mortals. You must use those
qualities not only to find personal success, but also to reach out to those who
need your help, to go where the faint-hearted do not dare to tread, to reach
the unreachable star. You must become a true leader!
To
do that, you must have a dream – not just for yourself, but for your
institution, for your community, for your country. You must then have a plan of
action on how to achieve that dream. It may be short term or long-term, you may need to revise it as you go
along, but your goal and your path to achieving it must be clear to you. In
addition, you must articulate that dream to others who can help you achieve it,
and, by the power of your personal conviction, inspire them to work with you to
realize that dream that they now share with you.
We have had many
leaders whom you can look up to for inspiration and guidance. But you also have
today a living example of a true leader in President Benigno Simeon Aquino III.
A reluctant candidate, he was elected President on May 10, 2010, in what many believe was a minor miracle. Some of us think the miracle was the precise
timing of the death of his mother, the
saintly Cory Aquino; the sudden, overwhelming realization of our people
that there have been government officials who served with integrity; and the generous withdrawal of Mar Roxas to make way
for Noynoy Aquino.
The
miracle continues in President Aquino himself. He has changed the course of Philippine
history and continues to do so. In his inaugural speech on July 1, 2010, he
outlined his social contract with all of us.
He
made a ringing promise – wala nang
wang-wang – that resonated with each and every one of us. It was the most
applauded statement in his entire speech, because it captured in those three
words, the root cause of many of the problems that beset our country. Those three
simple Pilipino words spoke volumes.
Those three Pilipino words encapsulated the principles he would live by as our
President. Those three Pilipino words can guide us in our own code of conduct.
Wang-wang
depicted power; position; prestige. It also depicted arrogance; a “me-first” attitude.
It was a symbol of a society that had forgotten the principles of democracy; of
equality; of service; of those having less in life being given more attention.
It was a symbol of the abuse of power and pelf that has become a social cancer,
gnawing at the heart and soul of the country.
Everything
the President has done since has flowed from
that simple promise.
The
antithesis of wang-wang is good governance, and he has made that his single
most important cause. He declared war
against corruption, a social evil that has become so ingrained in our society
that very few people thought he would succeed. But these past three years have
seen a sea-change in the attitudes of our people.
Two
dramatic events have demonstrated how corruption has become such a mind-set
among our government officials that they no longer realized they had destroyed
their own lives and possibly those of their families. The investigation into
the so-called “pabaon” of tens and hundreds of millions of pesos to top
officials of the military showed, in the clearest of terms, how the government
coffers could be raided with impunity. The image presented by a witness of huge
vaults bulging with cash, to be dispensed
by a simple controller, was mind-boggling. It symbolized the worst form of pillage, of
arrogance, of evil. It resulted in one man committing suicide, possibly to
atone for his sins, as the Japanese used to do, and possibly to spare his
family from the pain and the shame of being investigated as well.
The
impeachment of Chief Justice Corona showed another insidious practice in the
country – the total disregard for rules and regulations by those in power. As
in the case of Al Capone, the Philippine government used the tools of
accounting to show that a person’s net worth was not supported by his or her
income tax returns, or in the case of Corona, by his SALN. Because of these
cases, people could no longer
complain that the government only runs
after the “small fish”. The Chief Justice is after all number three in the government, right after
the President and Vice President.
President
Aquino did not think small. He dared go where others feared to tread. He did
what people say could not be done. He shared with us his dream and we are
reaping its promise. Like a true leader, he surrounded himself with the best
and brightest – intelligent, committed, honest, passionate men and women who
will walk his “daang matuwid” with him.
The
President’s relentless campaign against corruption and for good governance has
resulted in an unprecedented economic
boom that has our stock exchange soaring, various industries like the BPO, real
estate, and tourism sizzling; and indications of a brain gain – overseas
Filipinos coming home. Investors are
flocking to our shores.
But
many problems remain. The President has called for “inclusive growth” to ensure
that the benefits of economic development will improve the lives of those who
need it most – the families at the base and at the very bottom of the pyramid. He
is probably the most pro-poor President we have ever had. He has expanded the
conditional cash transfers as a lifeline for the very poor families;
implemented the K-12 to reduce the gap between the private schools and the
public schools, has targeted universal health insurance as a safety net; and
empowered communities through the Bottom Up Budgeting process.
He
has also made a clarion call for each and every one of us to help him achieve
these goals. How will you, as outstanding students and as future leaders respond?
First
you have to start with ourselves. You must live the enduring values of honesty,
diligence, and excellence in our own personal lives. Live lives of integrity. Help those in need. Say no to drugs or illegal or immoral
activities.
As
leaders, you will have a heavier burden than most. We, your elders, no longer
have the strength and energy to do what we used to do.
We now look to you to carry on the dream. You have the intellectual capacity to
dream, and the energy and confidence of youth to make that dream come true.
President
Aquino has given you an unprecedented opportunity to be part of a dream that
has eluded the country for decades. Seize the day! Help him transform our
society into a caring community. Help him establish companies that produce
excellent products and services at reasonable prices. Help him solve the
problems of poverty by using your creative ideas to think outside the box. Help
him transform our political system into one of duty and service rather than one of patronage and corruption. Elections
are coming up. Choose wisely and well. Do not be swayed by propaganda or empty
promises. I know that many of you are already involved in the elections. I hope
that, three or more years from now, some of you will run for government. We
need good people to do so, otherwise, we will be forever under the claws of
those who run, not to serve the people, but to enrich and aggrandize
themselves. The country needs young men and women who have the intellectual
capacity, the leadership qualities, and the heart for service. The country
needs you.
Help
him institutionalize the reforms that he and his cabinet members have started –
for inclusive growth, for an empowered people, for transparency and
accountability. Help him make us proud to be Filipino!
The
challenge and opportunity is before you. Make your parents proud. Make your
country proud. Be a true Filipino leader!
