an important post 2: project mesa

Diksyonaryo Atbp, together with Dingdong Dantes's YesPinoy Foundation, invites you to PROJECT MESA, a charity dinner on May 26 at Chef Bruce Lim's Chef's Table at The Fort for the benefit of the children of the Liangabon tribe in Surigao del Sur. 

The children were recently featured in a GMA 7 documentary, which exposed the extreme lack of learning materials and resources to provide the students with quality education. So extreme that they sit on the floor of a run-down structure that serves as a classroom and use banana leaves and "uling" as their pen and paper. Proceeds of the charity dinner will be used to buy school supplies, chairs, and tables for the new classroom that YesPinoy Foundation will be donating to the school.

Project Mesa plates are at PhP 2000 each. If you reserve and buy tickets on or before April 30, we can offer you a Php 200 discount. For more information, please visit our web site or the PROJECT MESA Facebook event page.

Thank you very much! 

***

The following is a letter I sent with the invitation above to some of my Facebook friends. To be honest, it took me a long time to decide whether to send this or not. As someone who would rather drown in her own misery than ask friends, family members, or anybody for a lifeline, I can tell you that asking other people for support, even if I've known most of them for years and years, is something way out of my comfort zone. Posting announcements and asking for donations on Facebook and Twitter is one thing. Writing a real letter to real people I talk to regularly, even if it's something as informal as a Facebook message, is, at least for me, intensely personal. I have no idea how they would react. Would they even believe me? Would it annoy them that I've opened the gates for random people to flood their inboxes? What if all I see are so and so and so have left the conversation notifications and not even get a single reply? Rejection and I, let's just say that we have a long and storied relationship. I wrote this letter several days ago, and two hours after I finished it, I was still staring at my monitor, debating with myself. To click or not to click send? And you know what I did? I slept on it. Twice. Yep, it took me two days to finally get over myself and my shallow fears. Because this isn't about me. If I continued to care about other people's opinion of me, I wouldn't be helping anyone. And the truth is, by giving my time to Diksyonaryo Atbp, I really don't think I'm doing anything special. I see it as a responsibility that, unfortunately, not many people are able to recognize. But you know what? In the few months that I've been involved in Diksyonaryo Atbp's activities, I realized that as much as there are people who remain passive about the problems of our educational system, our country is very blessed to have individuals who are just as passionate and very eager to offer whatever help they can. And the truly special thing about being with Diksyonaryo Atbp is being able to witness the kindness and generosity of the people who give and give without expecting anything in return. Because as clichéd and melodramatic as this may sound, a warm smile and a shy thank you from a child is really all you could ever need.

Now on to the letter.

Hi, friends! 

It's never easy for me to ask anyone for help, not even from friends or family, but then again, this isn't about me. So here I am, and I will try my best not to turn this into another verbose Anne Rice novel (but don't get your hopes up, haha). Most of you have known me for years and while I totally can't blame you for thinking that this is something completely out of my character (haha!), helping less-privileged children get a better learning experience by providing them with their most basic educational needs is something that I've come to be very passionate about. If this surprises you, that makes two of us.

I just think it's absolutely grotesque that even at this day and age, many Filipino children have not had a new book all to their own, or, in the case of the students from the Liangabon tribe, that they have to use banana leaves as paper and uling as pen. Looking back, I kind of want to give myself a good whack in the head for bitching and moaning to my mom because I didn't have the super awesome pencil cases that my classmates had in third grade and the offensively colorful Liza Frank backpacks with crazy-eyed unicorns on acid when I was in high school. 

Seeing what these kids have to endure, it seems like all the odds are stacked against them, and yet they still go to school every day. Never mind that they have to walk two kilometers in freezing temperature, never mind that all they have to write with is uling, never mind that rebels are terrorizing their schools and towns. They want to study, to learn, and I think it's criminal to not give them a chance to grow into productive and self-sustaining individuals.

The cynical bitch in me says that we can't possibly change the lives of all the children we've met and visited. We're not saviors nor do we aspire to be. But if for one day, we can give these children hope and let them know that there are people out there who believe in them, maybe that would be enough to spur even one child on.

We currently have 78 volunteers for Diksyonaryo Atbp, and it's a great feeling to be around people who are just as passionate and dedicated (maybe more) to this advocacy. But the real credit goes to the many friends, family members, and even total strangers who have gone out of their way to help DA in the last four years. What I'm trying to say is, we can't do this without you. There are many groups, NGOs, foundations, and charities who share the same goals as Diksyonaryo Atbp because the educational needs and problems that less-privileged Filipino children are facing today are staggering, and we can never have enough people to help them.

Diksyonaryo Atbp just finished its first outreach project for the year with our fourth visit to Mongoto Elem. School in Benguet (you can watch GMA's Brigada feature of the visit here: http://bit.ly/HA7eSg). This will be followed by a birthday outreach in Smokey Mountain on April 28, book donations for AFP learning centers in conflict areas in Mindanao on May 10-13, a charity dinner on May 26, our first visit to Masbate on June 15, and library-building projects in four Bulacan and Benguet schools in collaboration with National Bookstore in June and July (dates to follow). 

If you would like to donate books and Scholastic's picture dictionaries, volunteer, or attend our charity dinner, you may visit our new and improved website at www.diksyonaryoatbp.com (thanks to Bong and Gracee! Yey!) or email diksyonaryoatbp@gmail.com. Thank you very much! (Also, if you're still reading this, you're awesome.)

marching on

It's almost the end of March, which means that in a few days, we'd already be officially logging in the first quarter of the year. Can you believe that? It seems to me that as I get older, time also goes by so much faster than I would have liked. Oftentimes, I just lose track of what day it is, and one week just seems to blur and blend into one day. It's nuts.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how 2012 seems to be charged with a certain excitement that I haven't felt in a while. I was expecting it would die down eventually, maybe a few weeks into the year, but fortunately, it seems that it has managed to keep its momentum. It's been good so far, and I would really like for it to stay that way. I think I deserve a little reprieve from all the curve balls that always seem to get thrown my way, and if the Big Guy upstairs or Santa or my fairy godmother (whichever applies) decides to keep this peace, contentment, and happiness I feel right now permanent, then YES, by all means, go ahead. I, for one, would not be opposed to that.

Some highlights from the last couple of months: Mt. Pinatubo trek, meeting with Diksyonaryo Atbp volunteers, and meeting Pacman himself in line with DA's new project. (All photos from Eder and Lia Del Castillo.)

With three months down, I'm grateful and happy that I still have a few things to look forward to before summer ends, such as:

• Masbate and Mindanao trips and other outreach projects for Diksyonaryo Atbp. I can honestly say that these projects will perhaps be the highlight of my year.
• driving again (hopefully, I get over my fear of driving, traffic, and basically, the sight of cars other than mine on the road)
• my first ever Boracay trip. Yeah, that's right. I've never actually been to Bora because, well, I think it's not my type of vacation. But! I realize that just because I don't like crowded beaches, and the fact that I like peace and quiet during my travels, doesn't mean I should deprive myself of the chance to see one of the most beautiful places in our country, and perhaps, in the world. But that's if my friends and I can actually find a date that we can all fit into our schedules. I know. When did we get this busy and how did we become slaves to our schedules?
• more hiking trips. I don't know what happened to me exactly, but after our Pinatubo trek earlier this month (more on this soon), I suddenly discovered a desire and excitement for the great outdoors. I thought I would forget about it once the hype over our short hike subsided, but it didn't. Just earlier today, I found myself scoping possible hiking trips I could take with a friend or two before the rainy season settles in.
• the promise of something good. OK, I know this sounds completely cheese balls with a side of cheese sticks, but I am still not over the feeling and excitement of something really wonderful happening this year. As I mentioned in my yearend post, I have no idea what is, but I know it's gonna happen sometime, somewhere.

impasta!

I shouldn't be teaching anyone how to cook pasta, or anything for that matter, but it's already two weeks into March and I still have no blog post to show for it. So here it is. Just so my archives don't keep come up empty for March 2012.

This is, uh, how should I say this, a desperate attempt to make something edible for my sister and I when we were left at home with no food to eat. Adamant in our refusal to eat hot dogs for dinner, we scoured the cupboards and found leftover pasta. Then we headed to the fridge and found four tomatoes and a few eggplants. After a quick trip across the street to buy more tomatoes from the sari-sari store, we came up with this.

If there's one thing I hate, it's soggy pasta. I probably checked this 15 times to make sure I didn't mess up.

Boil, baby, boil. I wasn't sure if I should slice their bottoms because I was afraid tomato guts would spill out everywhere.

There was a short debate that went down between my sister and I over the addition of eggplants (she said nay, I said yay, yay, yay!), but I won (duh!) and she sorta liked it in the end. 

Onions and garlic meet olive oil.

Veggie party and some herb action. No fresh basil though (the horror!) so we had to make do with the dried/crushed ones from the cupboard.

Yeah, it doesn't look good from this angle (any angle, actually) but it tasted surprisingly decent.

OK, I won't be getting any scholarships to Le Cordon Bleu anytime soon, but I say this is a victory if only on account of us not starving that night and of my sister not gagging and/or turning a deathly shade of gray upon eating this.

an important post

With your help and generosity, Diksyonaryo Atbp would like to raise 200 dictionaries for children in remote public schools this year.

For just P450, you can buy 1 Scholastic First Dictionary, a great starter book for these young students, who, for the most part, have never even held new and unused books in their hands before.

You can also donate storybooks, grade school references or textbooks (preferably grades 1-3), child-friendly encyclopedia, and school supplies. If you're interested in donating Scholastic First Dictionary, please send me a message so I can give you more details.

For more information on how to donate and volunteer, you can visit our website here or add us on Facebook to learn more about the project.

Diksyonaryo Atbp was started by my friend Lia as a small birthday project in 2009, and through the kindness and generosity of friends, family, and even strangers, she has since donated books in Davao, Pampanga, Manila, Bulacan, Benguet, and Laguna. This year, we would like to give books to the kids of Masbate and Mindanao.

Check out the video of Lia's latest trip to visit the kids of Benguet last Valentines. Let's all help raise literacy, one child at a time.

***We can only do this with your help. To be honest with you, I won't be the first person to raise my hand and volunteer for community service and social work every time the opportunity presents itself. But to me, education is not just something that you leave to parents or teachers. It's a social responsibility and a right of every child. Something that we must all take part in and ensure not just for the betterment of every child but of our country as well. It's our duty, both as a person and as a Filipino.
And what better way to encourage learning than to read. Books have been my best friends ever since I was little, and my love for reading is what encouraged me to be a writer in the first place. My grandmothers on both sides of the family were all teachers so there was no shortage of books in our household. On that alone, I already consider myself very lucky, and I can never imagine what my childhood would have been like without the books that I grew up with.
I don't want to saturate this post with all the cliches about the importance of reading and how awesome books are because we already know that, and even those people who admit to not liking reading will tell you that, at some point, they've read a book, an essay, a poem, or a magazine article that taught them something invaluable or that changed how they see certain things about the world.
The bottomline is this: we will never see the progress and growth that our country can potentially achieve for as long as we stay passive about the importance of education and treat it as something that we can opt out of whenever it becomes inconvenient for us. Poverty sucks, but we can't rise above that if we don't provide our children, the very future of this country, the skills and the knowledge to make something of themselves. And that takes effort and commitment from all of us, not just from the parents, the teachers, or the government. Don't let our children and their children's children get caught in the vicious cycle of poverty and suffer through our government's flimsy excuses because I find it almost criminal that, even at this day and age, we still can't provide one book for every Filipino child.

fyi

I get that sometimes, when you have your rose-colored glasses on, you see the world turn into a bright shade of Barbie-colored happiness and all that wonderful shit, but maybe you should realize that by doing so, a lot of things don't appear to be what they truly are. Even for just one day, I wish people would just stop thinking what they assume to know about me and what goes on in my life. I will leave you to your sweet and fluffy dreamland where unicorns vomit rainbow sherbets, but please, for fuck's sake, stop thinking that the rest of us would like to live in it too or that your world is all there is. 

And on that note:

See? Even that ain't so pretty, after all.

© Photo from here