Thank you for this season

I love the ABS-CBN Christmas Station ID, “Thank you thank you. Ang babait ninyo.” The spirit of it is so positive and full of heart. This Saturday I was at Paco Market with Maja Olivares-Co. She has been such a steady partner these past five years as we are inching our way towards making Paco a really good market.

There have been ups and downs. Truthfully, it has been a struggle...but we continue to move forward. Hopefully by next year our dreams will come true.

 Every year Maja does a Christmas something at the market. For two years running she has put together a group of female friends. They cook and their kids, who are mostly Makati-based, sell cookies and they raise funds, which are then used to train the Paco Kids musically.  

I had the kids sing the ABS-CBN station ID. It lent levity to the event, a feeling of joy. 

Children helping children: Cool Kids hand over toys and school supplies to the children of Paco.

“Thank you, thank you. Ang babait ninyo!” If you experience the energy of the song, your heart lightens up and spills over.

There is something to be said about gratitude. This is the challenge with my kids and probably most kids who are well-off. They take things for granted, to the point of not being grateful when things are being given. When one ceases to have gratitude, one ceases to give. The heart that gives is given more in return. It is not material.
The Foundation is celebrating 25 years this year and we celebrated for one full day on Dec. 12. It was so full of joy and camaraderie. We played games. They received gifts. The Foundation has 394 employees.

 So throughout the day and especially at the end there was a palpable space of gratitude, joy, and camaraderie. Magic happens interpersonally when people go though challenges and overcome these collectively, or achieve something magnificent collectively. 

Gratitude. It implies an openness of the heart — a giving — a sweetly positively attitude to life.

In this spirit I would like to thank everyone who has helped the ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation this past 25 years. My father started the Foundation in 1989. ABS-CBN received a lot of money during the Baguio earthquake and he decided that an entity was needed to hold the money given in public trust. Thus, the Foundation was born.

 In reality the Foundation is a conflux of energies coming from all sectors: national government, local government, private sector, businesses, and even the communities receiving the help. It is and aspires to increasingly be the embodiment of what the Filipino is all about — people working together. ABS-CBN is the biggest media conglomerate in the country. As such we have inroads into the hearts and minds of, literally, millions of Filipinos. It is but right that we take on programs that benefit the lives of individuals on a massive scale.

The next 25 years sees us building models that give the message “Pwede pala… Kaya pala natin.” Each miniature triumph, in the very least makes a bold statement about the reality that can be if people work together. Each model that works is like a pearl in a necklace of gratitude to the Divine. The best way of showing gratitude to the Divine is by igniting the light of hope in people’s hearts.

The best way to light hope in people’s hearts is to show a reality that can be. This is one of the reasons I like reality shows like The Voice, X Factor and the like — especially when it shows people coming up in life who may not be rich but have the guts and talent to make a go of their lives. 

In the same way, in the field of community development, there is a way: we can have a better world. We can have a country without poverty. We can have a country where love rules the day. We can. There are models in the pipeline done by many well-meaning institutions that consistently say give similar messages. We just need to string it together, nourish it, protect it, and let it light an ever-increasing flame of bright possibilities of this very special country I am so grateful to have been born in.

 Merry Christmas! May the spirit of love prevail in our hearts.

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I can be reached at regina_lopez@abs-cbn.com.