When it is dark…

There was something about her letter and I do not even know her. I read her letter in the CENTEX (Center for Excellence) website, saying she put aside part of her stipend from Philippine Science High School to give to her "little brothers and sisters at Centex Manila." She is Pristine Joy Polido and she graduated valedictorian from the CENTEX elementary school in Tondo in April 2005. I wanted to write to her but it would have been not only a very tardy congratulatory note but also terribly odd since she did not know me. But I know of her. She comes from a wonderful experiment of a school called CENTEX where Ayala Foundation has taken it upon itself to partner with the Department of Education to show how citizenship between private and government institutions can be elevated to its finest, in support of education.

I was in CENTEX Manila two weeks ago where I saw the satellite dish that serves as CENTEX’s gateway to the Web. I would have wanted to let Pristine Joy know that our first and only satellite, Agila II, that beams the signals to that very dish was launched in the same year that she entered kindergarten, belonging to the first batch of children to enter CENTEX in 1998. Her education and Agila II were two very separate dreams launched in that same year.

I saw the satellite facilities (based in Subic) of Mabuhay Satellite Corporation in the same week I visited CENTEX in Tondo. I brushed up on the relevant theories that had to do with satellites and visited their facilities where I was so pleased to see young men and women ably operating our first and only satellite – a feat that would mean knowing what it would technically take to keep a $200-million space system afloat on a geostationary orbit (it moves in synch with the Earth’s movement) about 30,000 kilometers from the Earth’s surface! It was Arthur Clarke, the author of the famous science fiction series of books – Space Odyssey – who first theorized about the principles involved in satellite communications (that is why the satellite orbit is called the Clarke Orbit) and when his foundation celebrated the theory’s 60th anniversary last year, they launched an essay contest for kids on the importance of space technology. I was so excited to pass on the announcement to Filipino kids interested in space science but only to learn that it was only open to British kids (the Arthur Clarke Foundation also apologized for that limitation). 

I felt a sort of defeat in behalf of those Filipino kids who wanted to join the contest but when I learned of Mabuhay Satellite, I felt renewed to find space technology faring in the minds of the staff of a local corporation. Mabuhay Satellite has a licensed reach, which satellite people call "footprint," covered by two different kinds of "bands" which are like "shoes" which make for two different shapes in "footprints" that cover the Asia-Pacific region and even North, Central and South Americas, via its spot beam in Hawaii. This means we now have our own satellite that can get news, programs, conferences, and data from Internet providers from those regions and beam them anywhere to their clients within the same. They present a state-of-the-art alternative from the way we used to give and receive information. For instance, e-learning could be done across the region to the remotest of our islands so that "brain drain" need not be an excuse since we can have the best minds wherever they are, sharing what they know with learners practically everywhere. We can now have simultaneous conferences in our many islands, particularly on crucial issues concerning health and education, saving us travel and accommodation expenses. It is just one of those things again that makes the world so much more smaller. Now it is up to the corporate minds to get their corporate geniuses to work so that we could use this technology viably to elevate societal learning and consequently, our citizenship.

I was very happy to see that 95 percent or more of the engineers who work there are from schools like Don Bosco, Mapua and St. Louis in Baguio. They do not have the plague of on-the-spot alma mater reminiscences so endemic to most alumni of the so-called "prime" universities, namely UP, De La Salle and Ateneo, bragging about the heroes within themselves. The Mabuhay Satellite technical staff literally now have Filipinos looking up! But keeping something like a satellite afloat above also means many ground level operations and maintenance as well as eye-level tasks like keeping three-year-olds like me from pushing buttons in mission control which I kept referring to while there as "Houston." I am very grateful to the Mabuhay Satellite staff in Subic for being so accommodating and patient with my many curiosities and keeping my clumsiness from sending Agila II to Uranus as my friends feared.

Being in Mabuhay Satellite thinking of Pristine Joy also reminded me of kids in an organization called Pathways based in Ateneo. These kids did not get a break as early as CENTEX kids did. I told them about CENTEX recently and they cheered for the CENTEX kids because they remembered how hard it was for their own gifted minds to flourish in the struggling public elementary schools they were from. Pathways kids are bright high school kids who are in public schools (over 93 percent of all Filipino kids go to public schools) all over the country whose education Pathways supplements through sustained tutorials and other training, so that these kids can qualify for college scholarships. I often ask these kids how Pathways really helps in their education. All of them say that without Pathways, they could not see themselves ever persisting in high school and reaching college. I always tell people that if you experience the quality of the minds of these kids in CENTEX and Pathways (as well as the dedicated, creative staff of both organizations), as I have in my work with them, you need no further coaxing to find out how you can help these organizations or make them breathe a little easier while doing their work. And for those in government or private companies who do not make good on their commitments to Pathways or CENTEX or similar organizations, or are too quick to say that the Ateneo and Ayala Foundation do not really need your help because these organizations are "endowed" enough, you are behaving like the one whom when asked to look at the moon, looks instead at the finger pointing to the moon. You entirely miss the point and should make serious adjustments to your notion of citizenship.

So even if it seems to most like we have always been in the gutters of our own national history, I take worthy exception when it comes to experiences with the kids of CENTEX and Pathways. We should take our hats off to these kids for being deep pockets of hope for us all, when they could have just easily raised their hands in helplessness, given the kind of nation we did not build for them. With the gift of minds that they came with, whether in kindergarten in CENTEX or as high school freshmen in Pathways, they have given people like me enough reason to look up. If we nurture their minds now, they will be the Filipinos who will carry the nation and transform our decrepit wisdom and wrinkled old ways in seeing where we really are and where we can really go. One day, these kids will even be able to build our own satellite and not just own and operate it as we do Agila II now. They will not be like us. They will be so much better. They will stop reminding themselves that "the Filipino can" or that they are "heroes." They will just be ordinary Filipinos with good minds, living the most extraordinary lives as true Filipino citizens.

It even became clearer to me when I asked a third grade class in CENTEX Bauan, Batangas recently when it was best to see stars, and while all else were giving answers like telescopes on top of mountains, in observatories and other tools and places, a little girl to my left raised her hand and said with her eyes all aglow, "when it is dark." I could not help but pause while holding her tiny face in between my palms. I have never seen such a light in a long, long time…

(Note: To find out more, visit www.centex.org.ph, www.pathwaysphilippines.org and www.mabuhaysat.com)

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