How to make our mothers proud

Since it was founded roughly a year ago, Make Your Nanay Proud (MYNP) has engaged stakeholders in different communities and launched projects to benefit various groups, from typhoon victims in Eastern Visayas to mothers who are in jail. The goal is to make our mothers proud by reaching out to others who need help.

As MYNP founder and chairman, I say that the core of making your nanay proud is caring for others, serving your country and loving your community. By helping the typhoon victims and going to jails, engaging mothers and women who are deprived of freedom, ang mensahe na ibinabahagi mo is when you make your nanay proud, you love others, you care for the poor, you go to where you are needed, you are not a stand-alone, you are not isolated. Minamahal mo ang bayan mo; minamahal mo ang kapwa mo. You’re walking the talk. Because it’s not just about saying, “I love you” but it’s about living it.

I have been working hand-in-hand with the members of its executive committee, including Mike Sicat (president); Nini Borja (vice president), Gasper Gozo (secretary general); lawyer Wendell Dimaculangan (corporate secretary); Aileen Robles (treasurer); Carlos Munda (program director); Bemz Benedito (managing director); and its Council of Advisers. MYNP has not even been officially launched (a formal launch is being planned this May to coincide with the worldwide celebration of Mother’s Day), but it has already been working hard to stay true to its mandate as a civic organization of Filipinos who love their mothers and who want to honor them by helping themselves, others, their communities and the country through various projects.

For the remainder of 2014, these projects include an MYNP book where we will ask people to share how they make their mothers proud. We are also planning to set in motion the Kalusugan ni Nanay health and wellness caravan, as well as Bantayog ng Nanay monuments designed by ecclesiastical sculptor Willy Layug. Also on the agenda in the next few years is building the Bahay ni Nanay, which will eventually be the headquarters of MYNP. It will serve as a Nanay museum and a showcase of the ideals that the organization stands for.
MYNP also plans to come up with an awards or recognition program for both children and mothers. All of these projects are part of the group’s advocacy of reaching out to its primary constituents, children.

When you say, “Make your nanay proud,” we’re actually talking to the child. Even in our creed, it’s really the love of the child for the mother. We are encouraging children to make their nanay proud simply because our premise is lahat naman tayo, anak ng nanay.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that we are excluding fathers from the picture. We are not excluding them because fathers and children are all children of their mothers. We don’t want to say it’s a question of semantics, but basically it’s inclusive in a sense that when we talk of “Make your nanay proud,” we’re talking to all.

The first year has been a year for the group to discover its core mandate. Eventually, it will have one, the way Gawad Kalinga is known for building houses, or Gabriela as a women’s organization that reaches out to victims of domestic abuse.

But for now, MYNP is prepared to help where and when it can. The legalities took us a year, especially when the PDAF controversy happened, they became so strict that just to get letters of endorsement from government agencies, ang hirap. Now, we have our papers from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). It is now a foundation, and it is now incorporated but it took a year.

In the meantime, the MYNP team has been going around the country, talking to people and trying to find out how we can better concretize our vision. We want to listen to them as to how we can improve, paano namin ma-co-concretize, ma-so-solidify ang organization before we start asking other people to join us. We are young, we are in search of our identity.
But regardless of what happens, the important thing for us now is to stay true to our mandate of making people understand what it means to honor your mother and make her proud.