Congratulations to all graduates!

Years of hard work rewarded with a diploma, with a certificate, with a march up to the stage. Celebration follows, happy reunions, then reality strikes. Graduation confirms a chapter ended and a new one unfolding. Mixed emotions at this stage but often the more dominant one is one of hopeful excitement about being closer to one's dreams or moving on to more goals!

Congratulations to all graduates! You have done yourself and your parents proud! Congratulations also to the parents, the teachers, and the guardians who supported the students all the way to their graduation!

The graduating students of Linao National High School in Ormoc, Leyte, their parents, and their teachers had one wish after Typhoon Yolanda destroyed their school stage. All of them wanted to have a memorable graduation ceremony that they had wanted to have long before the 2013 November storm surge.

Of course, they had the option to hold a very simple ceremony in the open space within their school area. The typhoon-battered stage, however, was a bitter reminder of how much they lost, how much thousands others lost. Their graduation, coming months after Typhoon Yolanda, was not an easy task to accomplish for the students and parents and teachers who lost homes and perhaps, even loved ones.

This graduation was not the regular annual ceremony the school had been used to witnessing. This year's 2014 March 31 graduation was symbolic on various levels.

First, this graduation showed the strength and determination of the students, their parents and guardians, and their teachers to complete the remaining requirements of high school DESPITE the challenges of survival after the November typhoon.

Another facet made this year's graduation for the Linao National High School students truly meaningful.

Many of the students in this school come from the poorest families in the community. Before the storm, students had to wake up very early in the morning (about 3 or 4) to help their families earn to have food for that day. A number of them worked at the public market trying to help their parents eke a living by selling some items, others by offering to do other tasks within the market or elsewhere. After early morning work, these students proceeded to school but a number of them felt so tired, the teachers noticed them sleeping at the corner of their classrooms, trying to catch up on their lost hours of sleep.

The typhoon made daily survival more difficult for these working students and their families. YET they persisted, they went to school, completed their studies, and finally, they could look forward to their happy graduation!

This year's graduation also linked the graduates of Linao National High School with the rest of the graduates elsewhere in other disaster-affected communities. The strong, inspiring message of students from disaster-affected areas : beyond the storm, we chose to stand up and achieve!

Truly, this year's graduates, including their parents/families, teachers, and other supporters, are showing us all that there is so much more to live for, beyond the storms!

Back to Linao National High School. The upbeat, resilient, happy, optimistic graduation spirit was not matched by the typhoon-battered stage before them. Wishing to have the storm behind them, the teachers and the parents met together and vowed to try their best to repair and reconstruct the stage to have that long-awaited graduation for the deserving students!

And what a beautiful ceremony they gifted themselves that memorable March 31st graduation day! The students themselves put up the very colorful, happy decorations to make the stage come alive. Thanks to their parents who did their best to gift their children with the funds for their graduation attire and to the teachers for the happy ceremony, and thanks to God's intervention, for touching those in far-away Japan, specifically the Tsukuba Catholic Church, to share their resources for the stage reconstruction and to Toyo University, Regional Development Studies for the school supplies and toys that they shared with the school - that was one beautiful, unforgettable graduation ceremony for everyone!!!

Truly a remarkable feat made possible through the inspiring, indomitable spirit of the Linao graduating students, their parents and their teachers who did not allow the storm to stop them to attain their goals and to go on pursuing their dreams! 

Congratulations to you all!!!!

And thank you for showing us all that life goes on, that colors and the rainbows do appear, regardless of storms and challenges!

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