Donate Books to the Sta. Teresa National High School in Guimaras

I received an e-mail from my UP MBA batchmate, Anna Rojas. She was calling on us to donate books to the Sta. Teresa National High School in Guimaras.

A small library room had been donated to the school but at present, the library has no books. Anna and her group of Ateneo Faculty are thus calling on concerned individuals to make February a true month of love by sharing your love for reading and learning with others.

Different types of reading and teaching materials are welcome: encyclopedias, old books and magazines, educational audio and/or visual materials for as long as they are decent and still usable. Donations need not be limited to those which can be used by high school students. Reading material for other age groups can be sent to day care centers, grade schools, and high schools in the neighboring towns. College books are also welcome for the continuing education of the teachers.

Interested parties may drop their donations in the box just inside the Rizal Library (at the Ateneo) main door from February 3-28, 2007. Please sign your name and items donated in the log sheet with the guards in the Library so the group can acknowledge your donation. For queries and requests for pick up of donations, you may text or call 0915 409 1047 and/or 0922 888 3828.

Please do your share in helping out our fellow Filipinos in the Sta. Teresa National High School in Guimaras. If you are abroad, doing well, and happen to be from Guimaras, you may want to get involved in this project too in some way.

As a way of ending this appeal, I share with you Anna's personal note in the e-mail that she sent out. She says it best. I am glad to see that in our own little ways, ordinary individuals are taking action to help make lives better for our fellow Filipinos:

"Last December 2006, I had the chance to finally visit the town in Guimaras of the wonderful ladies who took care of me during my childhood years. After about 30 years of dreaming of going there, I was finally able to visit them at their homes & communities in Sta. Teresa, Guimaras.

In the course of my stay there, I had the unexpected opportunity of walking to the school that Sarah, one of their nieces attends--the Sta. Teresa National High School.

My original plan was to learn how to set the carabao to pasture but when I woke up at 5:15AM that cold, December morning, tatay (Sarah's grandfather) had already left for the fields. Hence, I thought of going with Sarah instead. The walk was almost like walking from Ateneo to Gateway/Cubao, through some grassy fields and rocky roads too! Since my morning was free, I thought of sitting in the morning classes of Sarah but first decided to pay a courtesy call and ask permission from their Principal, Mrs. Norma Tanaleon.

It was during my conversation with Mrs. Tanaleon, who has been with the school from its nipa hut days 33 years ago, that she shared with me the needs of their school--one of which was the concern that they had a relatively new library room built from a donation to the school but still NO BOOKS!

I was in the office of Mrs. Lourdes David, the Director of the Ateneo de Manila Rizal Library a few weeks ago for other matters and had the chance to tell her about my experience at Guimaras, and my plan of doing a book drive for the high school. With outright support, she immediately invited me to put up a box for donations at the Rizal Library, which hopefully soon, will be filled with your generous donations. =)

For those in this email who are not part of the Ateneo community--feel free to contact me at the above-mentioned numbers or thru this email so we can make arrangements to pick up any of your donations.

For now, the "concerned faculty" refers to my sister Dr. Nina Rojas of the Chemistry Department, and myself, and our growing number of friends and supporters for this little project.

Nina's little project too is to help build the chemistry laboratory of the high school since that facility has been unused for the past four years. The chemicals that were donated to the school when the lab was built 13 years ago, have all expired.

Nina and I often feel that there can be so much "excess" in Manila but so much need in the provinces, in this case, the Sta. Teresa High School in Guimaras, which we surmise is typical of other schools on that island. Thus, we appreciate all your support for our little project, which may not only help Sta. Teresa but other schools in the area as well. For sure, the little day care center, where one of our former "yayas" now works, can also benefit from pre-school books and/or educational materials. About 10 years ago, after my brief stint as a pre-school teacher, I sent my teaching materials to them. I was surprised to know last December, that they are still using some of the materials I sent them then.

By the way, you may donate reference materials too for their teachers!

Thank you very much for reading through!

We eagerly look forward to your support for our little project. Do feel free to share this email with others who might be willing to help too.

God bless to all!
AMDG!"

Now isn't this much better to listen to or read than all those political ads? If you happen to get in touch with Anna after reading this, please let her know that you learned about this project from viloria.com

Thanks in advance for your generosity and concern. =) The Lord will bless you a hundredfold.