VOF Week 4: ( Happiness in Serving Poor Women and Children)

“Money can’t buy happiness” was the very quotation I remember telling my teacher during my senior high school year in our final exam graded recitation. I’ve soon realized that I have live with this quotation in my entire life. I found happiness being an activist dedicating my life in the service of the poor especially women and children. I found it hard to think about my personal goals with a life that is so grossly intertwined with social activism. I supposed my social class background, my education and my constant grounding with the grassroots communities integrated my personal aspirations to the overall aspiration of the Filipino people to be free from the bondage of poverty.

My personal life is full of twists and turns and ups and downs. I felt exhausted and even frustrated but I’m still here with feet standing firm on the ground with clinched fist marching with fellow women, children and men chanting words of freedom and love of country. Many times, I fell down and break yet my love for my country Philippines keeps on telling me to rise up no matter how many times it may take. I need to breathe the air of love, hope and faith that keeps me going to the road less traveled by.

The thorny road to freedom where Filipino women, men and children live their lives freely to the fullness of their potential without oppression and discrimination is a vision I will not give up. I wanted to see all Filipino children going to school with full stomach and with empowering and liberating education. I wanted to have a community that take care of each other where Filipino women are free from abuses and chart their own destiny without fear and insecurity and control from powers that be. I want to see our country and ourselves as Filipino people free rather than slaves of our own masters and colonial masters. Thus, I want to see myself in the forefront of the struggle, a legacy I could give to my children and my family.

I want to see the world, a world of equals, where colored people are not discriminated, where poor countries rise above their poverty and enjoy their God-given resources, where gender orientation and sexual preferences is respected and recognized, where no discrimination between Muslims or non Muslims people and no superpowers that dominate the world.

In my own small way, I can be a candle light, a hope against hope that gives meaning and trace of life in this huge universe that seems to fall apart. Being a correspondent is a key to open the global awareness of social justice and women emancipation. Our people need my voice to enlighten the world about Filipino women oppression and show the world the right path to our freedom.

As a correspondent, I can tell the world about how globalization pauperized the Filipinos and labels us Filipinas as servants and prostitutes of the world. I want to share to the world that we Filipinos are freedom loving and peace loving people and Filipina women are not servants of the world but are servants of peace and freedom. We are the daughters of our ancestors who fought till there last breath against Spanish, American and Japanese colonization.

Being a correspondent, I could bridge globally our local and national initiative for change and development on organizing communities, fair trade, income generating projects, health services, child care, food security, etc. I found World Pulse a huge network of support for my empowerment, a common place where I and other women could strengthen and bond together to be one strong voice in the world that surely make waves for change. It’s a blessing for me to find such a beautiful community of loving and caring women.

I need strength and inspiration to continuously give back and touch women lives who needed it the most. Being a World Pulse correspondent I believe will expand my world and my responsibility globally and will harness my potentials to be of great help as a mother, a wife, an activist and a Filipina woman in the pursuit for global women empowerment.