My Thoughts @ 23

Image taken from: www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/how-catholic-charity-is-becoming-an-industry-and-losing-its-mission

One of the things we discussed in our business Ethics class is about service - giving back to others. As part of our class requirement we should have our service learning activity wherein we will be spending at least 6 hours of our time doing charity works to others. In our group, our creative way of doing service is by establishing honesty store wherein the beneficiaries are students belonging to lower income group. Just to give a short background of what we are going to do, below are the highlights of our proposal:

The project was inspired by the success of the Honesty Store in Batanes.

Our goal is to promote the virtue of honesty and integrity, and at the same time the concept of microfinance is practiced, giving them a long term source of income for their school expenses.  

CARD-MRI Development Institute (CMDI) is a newly set up educational institution that offers Senior High School (SHS) and College education.  Located in Bay in Laguna, CMDI as a Center of Learning opened its doors to students last June 2015 with most students coming from nearby communities (Los Banos, Calauan, San Pablo City, Alaminos).  CMDI now boasts engaging 91 students for its SHS program and 259 students enrolled in the Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship with Specialization in Microfinance. 

Most of the students who are currently enrolled at CMDI are children of financially hard-up parents whose livelihood are mostly into agriculture and direct selling. 

Below is our proposed timeline:

Our group will help in the set-up of the CMDI Project re Honesty Store.  Each of the members of the group will contribute PHP 500.00 which will be used to purchase school supplies. 

Our project will continuously be managed by The Block 7 students of the BS in Entrepreneurship of CMDI, since they are the one who initially thought of this project, and in cooperation with the school’s student council.

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Below are my top 5 values for each.

1. Happiness

Happiness is on top of my priority because I want to be satisfied with life, in a sense that I feel contented and proud of everything I have. Given that there’s a lot of frustrations and disappointments along the way, at the end of the day I want to see myself being able to smile and being cheered up by the people around me. For me, even if I become rich and famous, it does not matter if I’m not happy.

2. Sense of Accomplishment

I want to succeed in life and achieve all the goals I have set for myself. My greatest accomplishment will be for me to be able to live a life dedicated to others. In my 25 year plan, I actually wrote that I want to end up being a mentor, sharing all the experiences and knowledge I acquired through the years. I prioritized this value because by the end of my life, I want to ensure that I have fulfilled my mission and I don’t want to end up being frustrated.  

3. Family Security

One of the reasons why I want to finish my MBA, is for me to be able to provide enough for my family. In our Filipino culture, our family ties are really strong. Family reunions and a get together with relatives are common to our tradition. With that, I actually adopted it, and my goal is to ensure that the needs and security of my family are being provided.

4. Salvation

As a Catholic Christian, I believe in salvation, and I want to be rewarded with eternal life by the time I die. I want to live with God above. Through consistent praying and doing good to others, I believe I can achieve this goal. I prioritized this value because I don’t want to live a meaningless life.

5. Self respect

Self respect is important for me because I believe I can only gain respect from other people if I respect myself. I want to be someone who has a good reputation to society. I want to freely be able to express myself and I want others to accept that.

1. Intellectual

For me, in order to achieve the terminal values, being equipped with knowledge is really necessary. I want to be a mentor in the future, and I cannot achieve that I’m not intellectually capacitated.   

2. Ambitious

As a young professional, being ambitious is important because it motivates us to do more and to not settle down in mediocrity. Setting goals is one of the things I keep in doing for me to reach my ambitions. For me it is really important to be ambitious and to keep challenging myself in achieving more.

3. Responsible

I want to be responsible in all the things that I do as a citizen, employee, student, and daughter. In all aspects of my life, I’m always mindful of my actions because I know that others will be affected by any incorrect behaviour and decisions I make.  

4. Cheerful

Being cheerful is one thing that I want to be known for. I want to bring happiness to other people. Even if I’m faced out with stressful situations and sadness, as much as possible I want to seek for the silver lining behind the clouds. I know that it is sometimes hard to smile, but I do believe that things happen for a reason and I want to stay positive.

5. Honest

I want to be trustworthy. I don’t want to be labelled as a cheater or liar by others. Once trust is broken, it is hard to rebuild back. And with that, I want to stay honest. Only few people can be trusted and I want to be part of that few. I want to achieve my goals with integrity and refrain from any illegal or immoral actions even if it’s the easiest way.

St. La Salle is indeed one of the best saints that we can consider a good role model for leaders. Four main characteristics of St. La Salle as a leader would be (1) risk taker, (2) innovator, (3) servant leader, and (4) mentor.

Risk Taker

St. La Salle showed the ability of being a risk taker when he decided to pursue his goal of building a group of teachers despite the fact that his family does not support him, and it is uncertain whether he will succeed or not. He took a courageous step in initiating change. He even abandoned his family, renounced his position as Canon, and sold his ancestral house in order to fund his group. He left his doubts and fears behind because he is doing it for a purpose and he knows that God is with him.

In life, staying under our comfort zone is always the easiest thing to do. But if we come to rationalize it, staying under our comfort zones will not change or improve anything in our life. That’s why we need to take the risk.

As a young professional, I am very ambitious. At my young age, I already proposed a lot of process improvements on my job. I am not afraid to suggest ideas and change the current process even though I am one of the youngest members of the workforce. But St. La Salle inspired me to take it on a different level. It’s cool that I was able to take the risk in changing the process in the team that I am working with, but how about the society? What risk should I take in order to help and contribute to the society outside work? Those are the things that run into my mind right after knowing the life of St. La Salle.

Innovator

The most notable contribution of St. La Salle to our society would be the classroom way of teaching. Instead of the teaching the children one by one, he introduced the teaching in groups. He noticed that while one children is being taught by the teacher, the others are not engaged and so wasting their time in doing other things while waiting for their turn.

Aside from that, he also changed the language of teaching, from traditional Latin to French since it is more commonly used in the region, and only the clergy and wealthy knows Latin. With his ministry, education becomes more accessible to poor families. 

Until now, his idea of classroom set-up or simultaneous learning is being used widely. This is his legacy, which is very inspiring. For me, this type of innovation is something that good leaders should achieve. As I mentioned earlier, in my career, I was able to propose process improvements on my job. However, after knowing the change that St. La Salle has made, I am now inspired to take it on a different level, and innovate for the society.

Servant Leader

By forming the group of educators, St. La Salle served the needs of the poor people to be educated. At that time, education is only granted to those who can afford it. He works for a purpose. By the time he has formed his group; he didn’t just stop and let the brothers do the job. Instead, he continued working as a teacher and at the same time mentoring also the brothers.

For me, this is really inspiring. Only few of us, young professionals, work on a sole purpose to serve. Honestly speaking, most of us are only concern with the benefits and prestige that our company can offer. St. La Salle did not take any profit out of his group. He even gives up his wealth to achieve his goal.

As of this writing, I am thinking that in the future, I should take a job that could address the needs of our society. I am an Economics graduate from UP, and one of the things that we discussed a lot is about poverty. Right after knowing St. La Salle, I felt a small guilt within myself that even though I studied about poverty, I am not doing anything about it.

Mentor

In the beginning, the group of educators that St. La Salle has formed are not perfect teachers. But instead of rejecting those educators who seemed to be not fitted, St. La Salle mentored them. He even accepted a thief to be part of his group. Instead of punishing the thief, he corrected him. He influenced him to do the good thing.

On our current corporate world, most of the bosses are labelled as “evil” simply because they reprimand or blame their employees for committing mistakes. This actually reminds me of the movie, The Devil Wears Prada and this should not be the case. As a good leader or boss, we should be a good mentor and correct the employees in a good way. A great way of mentoring is also by being a good example just like St. La Salle.

Overall, right after knowing St. La Salle, my goal is to be like him as a leader - someone who leads for a purpose of serving others and who is brave enough to implement change in the society.