Cris Valdez – a Philippine street kid that becomes a global inspiration

In a picture taken on Oct. 20, 2012. Cris Valdez, known as Kesz, poses with his International Children's Peace Prize trophy he recently won in the Netherlands, during an interview at the compound of the child rights' advocacy group Club 8586 in Cavite City, Cavite province. — AFP

CAVITE, Philippines — Cris Valdez began life unwanted by his parents and was soon scavenging in a Philippine rubbish dump, an unlikely start for a boy now hailed as an inspiration for children around the world.

Valdez, 13, won this year's International Children's Peace Prize for his work as head of a charity organization that educates and hands out gifts to thousands of youngsters in his poverty-plagued hometown.

South African human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu gave Valdez his award at a ceremony in the Netherlands in September, declaring him a "voice for the voiceless" and a "true inspiration".

After returning to the streets of Cavite, a coastal city on the outskirts of Manila, Valdez spoke in a soft voice to AFP about his noble philosophies that emerged from personal devastation and the people who turned his life around. "I help because I see myself in children who roam and live on the streets," Valdez said during one of his weekend community outreach programs.

"Some good-hearted people showed me love and changed my life, and I am just paying it forward."

Valdez, nicknamed "Kesz", was born the third of nine children from a desperately poor couple who lived with hundreds of other squatter families on the fringes of a huge garbage dump in Cavite.

His parents called him "bad luck" because they tried to sell him when he was a baby but failed, according to Harnin Manalaysay, the head of a local youth charity who eventually rescued Valdez. Manalaysay said Valdez was forced to start scavenging in the garbage dump from the age of two.

At ages three and four, Valdez was sleeping anywhere he could, including atop tombs at the city cemetery, because he frequently fled home to escape beatings by his rickshaw-driver father, according to Manalaysay. At an age when children are just learning how to make friends, Valdez was learning to beg and steal.

"I found him sleeping on a curbside covered in flies. He was very dirty and being kicked by passers by," Manalaysay said.

Manalaysay enrolled Valdez, then aged four, in his alternative learning programme for street children, in which volunteer teachers use mobile classrooms on pushcarts to bring classes to the students.

In between lessons, Valdez still scavenged for scraps to help out his family. Then bad luck struck Valdez again when he was five.

Fellow scavengers jostling around a dump truck accidentally shoved him into a pile of burning tyres, badly injuring his arms and back.

"My father was angry when I came home and said I deserved it for being stupid," Valdez recalled.

Valdez said his mother took him to Manalaysay, who paid for his treatment and allowed him to recuperate at the charity worker's shelter for street children, called Club 8586. "She came back (months) later to tell me they did not want him back anymore," Manalaysay said.

Manalaysay, a portly marine engineer whose club has been helping troubled youths for more than 27 years, became his legal guardian. Under his tutelage, Valdez recovered, and his grades improved.

He also began volunteering as a six-year-old to teach other street children about basic hygiene.

When Valdez turned seven, Manalaysay asked him what he wanted as a birthday gift. "I told him I wanted other children to receive what I had: rubber slippers, toys and candies," Valdez said. So Valdez and his guardian spent the day giving various items to street children.

The giving became a yearly tradition and led to the creation of Valdez's own charity, called Championing Community Children.

Valdez's plans for the immediate future are to continue with his charity, while making sure his school work does not suffer from his busy schedule.

Eventually, he wants to work in one of the toughest jobs of all, while expanding his charity work.

"I'm studying hard because I want to be a doctor... I want to help more children, not only in the Philippines, but also in other countries," he said. —

AFP

Continue reading

Huffington Post: Benigno Aquino; Transformational or Transitional Leadership?

How could you describe the leadership of the world famous Philippine leader President Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III?

• (A) Transformational Leadership?
• (B) Transitional Leadership?
• (C) None of the above?
• (D) No Comment

This Article is written by Richard Javad Heydarian, and published in Huffington Post. The author described Mr. Aquino as more of a transitional rather than a transformational leader. The world want to know your point of view to Mr. Aquino. 

------------------------------------------------

Without a doubt, the Philippines is finally on the move -- and well on its way to regain its long-sought place of pride among Asian nations. After decades of stagnation, political uncertainties, and anemic economic performance, the country has emerged from the ashes of despair, confidently riding on a wave of cautious optimism.

Today, the country has one of the world's fastest growing economies, one of Asia's most bullish stock markets, a constantly improving credit rating, a booming real estate, and a strong currency that is helping an increasingly mobile and confident consumer class.

Despite its reputation as Asia's 'sickman,' or even a regional basket case as others have suggested, the Philippines hasn't been a stranger to success -- definitely far from being a lifetime laggard. Back in the '50s, the country was one of the world's fastest growing economies, relishing Asia's second highest per capita income after Japan. Manila's soft power lied in its status as a regional hub of fashion, commerce, travel, and culture. It was a beacon of democratic capitalism in the whole Asia -- reflecting the relatively benign colonial legacy of America.

However, over succeeding decades, the Philippines found itself steadily falling behind its regional peers. First came the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) of South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. Then, the Philippines watched with much envy the likes of Malaysia and Thailand overtaking it. By the early 21st century, Vietnam and Indonesia -- to Manila's horror -- began outdoing their Filipino counterpart. With Myanmar opening up its economy, some commentators have sardonically suggested a new competition for the Philippines.

There is nothing romantic about a former high school jockey watching all his classmates cruising past him.

So, why has the Philippines -- a former regional leader -- fallen behind its Asian peers? Why does it suffer from one of the highest rates of underemployment, malnutrition, inequality, and poverty in Asia? Well, basically because of a lethal cocktail of bad policies, cultural complacency, and weak (if not bad) leadership.

The issue of culture is a tricky one. In his award-winning essay, 'A Damaged Culture,' veteran journalist James Fallows suggested that a culture of dependence, complacency, corruption and ineptitude lies behind Philippines' dramatic decline in the latter half of the 21st century. Yet, the problem with 'culture arguments' is that they have a static analytic approach, failing to understand the dynamic and mutually constitutive interaction between culture, on one hand, and the broader political economy, on the other.

Modern history is replete with examples of how so-called 'backward societies' -- described as lazy and savage by status quo powers -- have been transformed into one of the world's most innovative and progressive nations. After all, at the beginning of the 19th century, who would have thought that the feudal-agricultural Japan would rise -- thanks to the 'Meiji Restoration' -- as a global industrial power? Or, at the beginning of the 20th century, who would have imagined that relatively isolated Scandinavian states such as Sweden and Finland or resource-poor Northeast Asian countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan would leapfrog to the top of global indices, in terms of infrastructure, innovation, science, and technology? This is where policy and leadership come into the picture.

In Southeast Asia alone, if there is one thing that the likes of Malaysia's Mahathir or Singapore's Lee Kwan Yu could teach the Philippines, it is the fact that culture is malleable; it can change and be shaped along a particular vision -- thanks to information technology, universal education, and varying forms of state indoctrination and/or mainstreaming.

The very concept of 'nation-state' is in itself a construct, so when we say 'national culture,' we are also describing a specific construct. Thus, I find it a bit 'orientalist' to ascribe an essential cultural trait to a particular country, especially one as globalized and cosmopolitan as the Philippines.

In short, the maladies of Philippine society could be traced back to decades of bad leadership and wrong polices, which have failed to create the conditions for sustainable economic growth and political stability along democratic lines. For decades, a combination of corrupt leadership and technocratic incompetence has given birth to crony capitalism, oligarchic politics, and concentrated economic growth.

This is where the second question comes in: So, why is the Philippines re-emerging? Well, largely because of the new leadership of President Benigno Aquino III. When one starts from a relatively low base -- high rates of poverty, corruption, cronyism and political indifference -- it simply takes a clean, credible, and sincere leader such as Aquino himself to a) restore a measure of trust in state institutions and b) calm nervous markets.

Banking on his larger-than-life pedigree, Aquino's main focus has been to rid his country of corruption, especially in the upper echelons of the state. Staying true to his campaign promises, he has successfully pushed for the impeachment of leading magistrates (tied to the previous administration), who have been accused of public misconduct and corruption -- paving the way for the execution of Aquino's ultimate plan: to put former President Gloria Arroyo in jail for good.

Since President's Aquino's economic policies are not significantly different from his predecessors, the current economic resurgence is largely a reflection of growing market confidence in the leadership's ability to maintain political stability, shun draconian regulatory reforms, and provide a measure of macroeconomic predictability, especially in terms of interest rates and inflation.

Even rebel groups such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been encouraged by Aquino's sincere leadership, precipitating a historic 'framework peace agreement' that was signed between the rebels and the Philippine government -- potentially ending decades of conflict in southern Philippines. Overall, the Philippines' resurgence is not so much about Aquino's technical expertise as it is the good will expressed in his actions.

However, Aquino is yet to propose an economic agenda that will reverse Philippines' highly unequal, unsustainable, and concentrated patterns of growth. He has also been criticized for his lack of support for important transparency-boosting measures such as the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill.

This is why Aquino is perhaps more of a transitional rather than a transformational leader.

Written by Richard Javad Heydarian, Published in Huffington Post

Huffington post 

Continue reading

Philippines’ Investments in economic zones rise 10% to ₱138 Billion — PEZA

Commercial hub of Embarcadero, the ₱1.8-billion IT Park Promenade which will be the very first IT ecozone in the Bicol region

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority reports a 10.30-percent jump in investment commitments in the country's economic zones for the first 10 months of 2012 to ₱137.992 billion.

The total comes from 480 projects, 6 percent fewer than last year's 510, but the amount is ₱12.988 billion more than last year's ₱125.104 billion.

As of September, actual exports went down 6 percent year-on-year to $29.785 billion from $31.624 billion, as the country continues to experience the slowdown in global demand for electronics products in particular.

However, the data showed that actual direct employment increased 8 percent to 884,510 from 822,147 a year ago.

The agency said earlier that despite the decline in electronic shipments, investment commitments still grew, with other sectors remaining bullish about better export numbers in the coming months.

However, the data showed that actual direct employment increased 8 percent to 884,510 from 822,147 a year ago.

The agency said earlier that despite the decline in electronic shipments, investment commitments still grew, with other sectors remaining bullish about better export numbers in the coming months.

An official said PEZA remains optimistic of meeting its target this year of a 12-percent growth for all investments, exports and employments amounting to ₱323 billion.

PEZA has been aggressively conducting marketing and investment missions overseas, just like what its counterpart Board of Investments has been doing for the past months.

GMA News

Continue reading