SM scholar graduates triumph over poverty

MANILA, Philippines - Kent Mission manages to look wittingly at his hardship in trying to finish his four-year college course inside a cramped 5 x 4 meters of dwelling space without any electricity since his jobless mom is so poor and his father even had the guts to abandon them to start another family. Often, the allowance he got from his SM Foundation scholarship was shared for the family’s daily subsistence.

Mission, a cum laude graduate of Liceo de Cagayan University in Cagayan de Oro, is one of 220 graduates of the SM Foundation college scholarship program (out of the 1,300 scholars that it maintains) who proudly marched at the SMX Convention Center on Wednesday to thank SM founder Henry Sy Sr. and his family for their generosity in making them “realize their dreams of finishing a college degree for a better life.”

 He gave a testimonial during the graduation, where he recalled that because he had to finish a lot of readings and homework for his BS Accountancy degree at the Liceo de Cagayan University, “I had to do most of the readings in the library at daytime because we had no electricity at night.”

He brought the house down when he said: “Aside from being grateful to SM for my scholarship, I also have to thank SM for giving me many firsts in life: the first time to step foot in our CDO airport, the first time to ride a plane and the first time to set foot in Manila which are all just part of my dream.”

The SM Foundation scholars, coming from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, mostly come from marginalized or solo-earner families, who only dreamt of getting a college degree after finishing their secondary years in public schools.

Henry Sy Sr., his wife, Felicidad and their children honor these graduates together with their parents yearly with a testimonial dinner in the SM Megamall, but when the SMX Convention Center was built, the venue was moved to accommodate the graduates, their parents, former SM scholars, the Academe, SM executives, SM business associates, clients, friends and scholarship sponsors and partners. The graduates from the Visayas, Mindanao and the Bicol regions were flown in and billeted for free in Manila for the presentation and honoring.

This batch of graduates produced six summa cum laude, 19 magna cum laude, 29 cum laude and 15 with academic distinctions. Four of them finished as class valedictorians.

Three parents were chosen to speak and express their personal gratitude to “Tatang Henry” for giving hope of a better future for their children. They were Yolanda Pangilinan (mother of Kenneth Pangilinan, summa cum laude, BS in Accountancy at Holy Angel University in Pampanga); Rey Ruedas (company driver and father of Regine Ruedas, magna cum laude of BS in Business Administration from University of the Philippines, Diliman) and Nimfa Araullo, mother of Dee Jay Araullo, magna cum laude, BS in Secondary Education, Major in English, at the National University. 

The commencement speaker of the afternoon program was Richard Joshua Sanz, founding president/CEO of Philippine Food Asia Corp., who inspired the students by narrating how at the age of 24 he left his good position in an IT company to found Bibingkinitan in 2004 without any idea of producing a food product and growing it not just in the Philippines but abroad. Bibingkinitan now has 200 branches in the country and will shortly be operating also in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Like the scholars, he is grateful to Henry Sy Sr. for giving him the opportunity to build on his business within the various SM malls. His company now also has other brands of food products, most of which are also located in SM and other malls nationwide.

The Foundation also recognized its partners in the My Scholars Program that included: Anchor Land Holdings, Felicidad Tan Sy (personal scholars), Harley T. Sy (50 personal scholars, 17 of which graduated this year), Louis Coson Friendship Cup, Merck Sharp and Dohme Phils., Sanofi-Aventis Phils. Inc, Sandoz Philippines and 8990 Luzon Housing.

With 82 partner universities and colleges, SM Foundation has been producing academically outstanding men and women since 1993. To date, over 1,900 students have graduated from the program with many of them gainfully employed in the SM Group of Companies or other local conglomerates and even abroad.

Aside from the College Scholarship Program for over a hundred Yolanda survivors, SM Foundation has also started constructing school buildings — including a two-story, 4-classroom in San Joaquin Central School in Palo, Leyte and two buildings of 20 classrooms for Pedro E. Candido Memorial National High School in Hermani, Eastern Samar. The Foundation is also currently rebuilding the Tacloban City Hospital, renovating 10 rural health centers in cooperation with the BDO Foundation. There are other school buildings nationwide which are also slated to be turned over under the regular Adopt-a-School Program of DepEd.