Another Filipino hero gained worldwide attention last week. Efren Peñaflorida, dubbed as the "pushcart educator," was chosen as the CNN Hero of the Year. Efren, known as Kuya Ef, established the Dynamic Teen Company (DTC) in 1997 when he was only 16 years old. The son of a pedicab driver and a housewife, Efren often played in a dumpsite as a kid. Seeing his playmates sniff solvent and become juvenile delinquents, he began a unique project: the kariton klasrum (pushcart classroom).
This project was later expanded into the K4: Kariton Klasrum, Klinik at Kantin (plus clinic and canteen, or health and nutrition). Efren narrates: "We had a hard time during our first few years. We needed to bring noodles or bread so that the children would listen to us. There were times when they threw stones at us, but we continued with what we started."
Efren’s achievement underlines the sorry state of an economy and a political system that cannot respond adequately to the basic needs of a teeming population. It also throws the spotlight on the proverbial silver lining: the growing army of youthful volunteers who are stepping up to claim responsibility for building a better future.
DTC’s Kariton Klasrum is an illustration of an alternative learning system (ALS) that draws children and youth away from drugs and crime and brings them back into the productive mainstream of society.
Fr. Marciano (Rocky) Evangelista, SDB, established the Tuloy sa Don Bosco Foundation in 1993. As reported in its Web site, Tuloy Foundation, Inc. developed the Tuloy Aral (Continuing Education) program with the help and approval of the Department of Education (DepEd). Through this program, Tuloy can implement in-house non-formal education classes using the Alternative Learning System modules.
Under this program, the student progresses through five learning levels (instead of 10, as in the formal school) and is instructed in six basic subjects. The students take up an exam with DepEd that allows them to be integrated into formal schools should they desire to pursue formal education. True to the Bosconian tradition, Tuloy offers a parallel vocational-technology track that includes courses in automotive technology, refrigeration and air-conditioning technology, electrical and electronics technology, and baking technology.
What is remarkable about Kuya Ef’s DTC is that it is composed entirely of young volunteers, including reformed teenagers who were formerly drug users and petty thieves. They are infused with idealism and a sense of mission to create a better future for themselves.
In The Real Wealth of Nations, author Riane Eisler identifies volunteers as the bulwark of the unpaid community economic sector that, she asserts, must be recognized in reckoning gross national product (GNP) and gross domestic product (GDP), the traditional measures for assessing a country’s country. Dr. Eisler defines this sector as one that "includes volunteers working for charitable and social justice groups in what is today often called civil society."
What is the unique contribution of volunteers like Efren Peñaflorida in transforming societies?
Dr. Eisler says they are catalysts and change agents. Initiatives like DTC’s Kariton Klasrum produce what Lauralee Albeen, a leading thinker in interactive design, calls "ripple effects." By caring and showing compassion for juvenile kids and teen-agers, Kuya Ef and the DTC volunteers are sparking a "caring revolution" that is also a "sea change." This is the "cumulative effect of all the ripples flowing from giving visibility and value to the most important human work: caring and caregiving."
Kuya Ef and Fr. Rocky have chosen to focus their attention on an activity that yields the highest economic and social rate of return: the education of children and youth. The beneficial effects are well known. Dr. Eisler explains: "Caring is a sound and essential investment. Poverty and hunger are more effectively addressed -- as greater value is placed on caring, the illegal economy begins to shrink. As our material, emotional and spiritual needs are increasingly met, the market for drugs, illegal arms, sex slavery and prostitution, and other economic activities now in the hands of crime syndicates is reduced. This too brings huge economic and social benefits."
Even more concretely, and this is evident in the impact produced by DTC and Tuloy sa Don Bosco: "With savings in criminal justice courts and prisons comes more fiscal fluidity. Other social costs deriving from uncaring policies and practices, all the way from high school dropout rates and job absenteeism also decrease."
Efren Peñaflorida delivered a stirring acceptance speech: "Each person has a hidden hero within, you just have to look inside you and search it in your heart, and be the hero to the next one in need. So to each and every person in this theater and for those who are watching at home, the hero in you is waiting to be unleashed."
He continued: "Serve, serve well, serve others above yourself and be happy to serve. As I always tell to my co-volunteers: you are the change that you dream, as I am the change that I dream, and collectively we are the change that this world needs to be."
He became CNN Hero of the Year on the strength of votes sent by online voters. Just as American Idol finalist Jasmine Trias rode the crest of Filipino-Americans’ overwhelming support, it is reasonable to surmise that Efren was carried all the way to the top largely by Filipino voters from his homeland and from all over the world.
In voting for Efren, they signified that he embodies the values and aspirations of Filipinos who admire and recognize genuine acts of kindness and heroism, and who are willing to cast their lot with a new breed of youthful leaders that can truly transform our country. We can only hope that the 2010 national elections will produce a similar outcome.
Readers are invited to visit sonnycoloma.blogspot.com or send comments to sonnycoloma@gmail.com
