Good guys at Silliman

You meet a lot of good guys, and of course, women (I don’t like the word gals) at the Silliman Founders Day reunions. They’re the ones who make Silliman proud – wherever they are, whatever their field.

This year’s Sunday morning service at Silliman Church, the speaker, Adlai Jamandre Amor, was the 1994 Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee. He has made a name for himself as a journalist, and later, in the United States, where he became a strong advocate for the environment, becoming involved in such organizations as the World Wildlife Fund International, Green Peace USA, Asian American Justice Center, and the Global Fund for Children. An ordained elder of Silliman University Church and the Presbyterian Church in the United States, he is currently serving as a trustee of the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California.

Adlai’s sermon, entitled “When Portals Shift,” dwelt on the shift in the university’s responses to challenges during its 117 years of existence. Surprisingly, more than half of it spoke about a member of Adlai’s 1973 class – Dr. Junice Demetrio Melgar.

Junice graduated with distinction from Silliman University High School in 1973 with distinction, finished medicine at the University of Santo Tomas, and lately, an academic at the University of the Philippines. At the UP, she and a classmate’s eyes were opened when they discovered how badly rural Filipinos – especially mothers and children – were not only underserved, but neglected.

The government favored the creation of a health system dominated by such medical institutions as the Philippine Heart Center, the Philippine Lung Center and other facilities and programs that “glorified the Marcoses instead of serving the needs of poor Filipinos.”

Junice and her classmates then decided to join the Communist Party of the Philippines, which, said Adlai Amor, offered the best organized resistance against the Marcos dictatorship. Through a program similar to China’s barefoot doctors program, they were able to minister to the needs of women and children.”

Said Adlai: “When the 1987 Constitution legalized the Communist Party, Junice emerged from her underground life and co-founded clinics serving the health needs of women and children while at the same time, empowering them. Ironically, they were put on trial by Gabriela, the women’s wing of the CPP, for wanting to accept funds from the United Nations Fund for Population Activities to upgrade their health clinics. The official records indicate that they had an amicable settlement, but in reality, Junice and her fellow doctors were expelled from the Party.”

Today, their non-government organization, Likhaan, runs seven community health-based programs in the poorest communities of Manila, Bulacan, and Eastern Samar, including the one visited by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year.”

Junice’s most important contribution, said Adlai, was the role she and Likhaan played in the passage of the Reproductive Health Law of 2012, “despite the vociferous objections of the Roman Catholic Church. We owe June and her colleagues at Likhaan for persistently advocating for women’s health and reproductive rights.”

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 We have in our hands a copy of THE PR GURO, a biography on the public relations man Carlos A. Agatep which was launched at Silliman last week.

The noted mass communication specialist, Dr. Crispin Maslog, took it upon himself to write about the PR “guru,” saying in his intro, “If there’s a name that readily rings Anvils in the public relations world, it would be Carlos “Charlie” Agatep. In a public relations career that has spanned five decades, Charlie has won . . . 145 Anvils: 60 Golds, 78 Silvers, 3 Grand Anvils, 3 Platinums, and a Special Anvil for excellence in brand-building and reputation management. To the uninitiated, the Anvils are the Hollywood Oscars for outstanding PR programs and PR tools in the public relations profession.

“It is no wonder then that Charlie has been dubbed the PR guru of the Philippines. But before he became the PR guru that he is today, Charlie was just another pr in small letters – a pr-obinsyano from the small town of Claveria, Cagayan province in the northernmost tip of the Philippines.”

In very healthy and entertaining style, articles trace Charlie’s beginnings – from a poor boy fighting all odds, to climbing up the ladder to pioneer and icon. They talk of his life and loves, of his lectures and teaching methods that inspire the true and faithful journalism students.

Sonny Coloma, former communications secretary to President Benigno Aquino III, writes in the foreword, “… in the rough-and-tumble fields of journalism and PR (Charlie) disdained the cavalier toward ethics of those who preferred to tread the slippery slope. Charlie Agatep’s path to preeminence was paved by professionalism and competence – and that has made all the difference.”

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