Asiawide Refreshments trains future leaders with free workshop

MANILA, Philippines - A quick look at Philippine history will show the Filipino youth’s natural inclination towards leadership. Our national heroes, the First Quarter Stormers, the EDSA revolutionaries, the Ondoy and Sendong volunteers – all of them were leaders, and many of them were members of the youth.

But leadership is not just a matter of passion. It requires skill as well, and often that requires training – and often, too, training does not come cheap. With this in mind, the Asiawide Refreshments Company (ARC), which distributes RC Cola to the Philippines, decided to conduct a free leadership training workshop for 40 of the country’s most deserving-but-underserved freshmen and sophomores, to fully harness and develop the leadership potentials of our country’s youth.

One of the program participants is 19-year-old Benito Nolasco Jr., a cheerful second-year student from St. Joseph’s College (SJC) in Quezon City.

Benito hails from Ilocos Norte. His father was a vegetable farmer, while his mother runs a sari-sari (variety) store. He has one elder sister and one younger brother.

Benito’s leadership ability showed right from his first year in high school, when he became the freshman representative of their locality’s Student Supreme Government (SSG), a student organization authorized by the Philippine government to implement programs, projects, and activities in local schools. In his second year, he was the SSG’s public relations officer. In his junior year, he became the auditor, and in his senior year, he was vice president.

In those four years, Benito and his colleagues enthusiastically implemented projects for their community. There was, of course, the ever-present Clean and Green project. They also had annual classroom renovation efforts. Benito was especially proud of the Reading Literacy Center that his SSG was able to put up with the help of a sponsor they found in his last high school year.

“When I was in Ilocos Norte, I never felt poor. My mother and father worked together to provide for us,” Benito Nolasco said. “We didn’t have much, but we had everything we needed. For food, we would harvest vegetables from my father’s farm. Maybe that’s why even today, my favorite dish is pakbet. It reminds me of home.”

Benito’s plan in high school had been to go to college and someday become a high school teacher. He said he has always felt this was his life’s mission. “When children are young, their lives are simple and uncomplicated. But when they become teenagers, big changes happen in their attitudes and in their behavior.

“I want to be there when those changes happen, so that I could guide them and help prevent them from making mistakes that could change their lives forever.”

It was a noble dream – but this dream nearly reached a dead end when Benito graduated from high school, for although his parents had always been able to afford food for their table, they could not afford college tuition for Benito.

For the first time in his life, Benito felt his family’s poverty strike him right in the face.

Fortunately, a kind cousin offered to sponsor Benito’s tuition and allowance. So Benito moved to Metro Manila and lived with his cousin’s family to be able to attend school in SJC, where he was enrolled. To somehow pay his cousin back for his kindness, Benito would sometimes tutor his five-year-old niece after he got home from school at 7 p.m. Then he would have dinner and review his lessons, trying to maintain the high grades that consistently put him in his school’s honor rolls. By the time all his tasks were done, it would be 11 p.m. – a very late hour for the Ilocano boy used to being asleep by 9 p.m.

It took time for Benito to adjust to life in the city. Then just as he was starting to settle in, news came from the province that his father had died.

“You know,” Benito reminisced, “my mother used to insist that my father get monthly checkups when he was still alive. She said it was important for him to stay healthy because our family depended on him.

“Then, in one of his checkups, all of a sudden, they found something wrong with his kidneys. Shortly after that, he was gone. It was very fast.”

With his family’s breadwinner no longer present, Benito took it upon himself to shoulder some of the burden of feeding his family. “My cousin gives me allowance every week. When I’m very hungry and I’ve finished my packed lunch, I use it to buy food. But I save as much as I can and send it home to my mother.”

Benito said he intends to make the most of college despite his poverty. “That’s why I’m so grateful for this opportunity that ARC has given us. What I learn here, I can pass on to my future students.”

He is also eager to finish school so that he can help his family better. But, we asked, how much help can he give his family if he becomes a high school teacher?

“Hindi naman po matakaw ang pamilya ko (My family is not greedy),” he said. “They do not ask for much.”