MAMITA Pardo de Tavera — to those who did not know her — would give one the impression of an elegant but formidable mestiza lady. And yet, after working with her for a few years and considering her a good friend, I found that she was, if nothing, a veritable pussycat. She was multi-dimensional, able to go beyond her normal ken as a “simple doctor,” as she would characterize herself. I discovered that this wonderful woman possessed the most innate of management skills, able to harness like-minded people and motivate them to move in a particular direction. She often professed not knowing anything about management or a technical issue, but would listen intently to one’s attempt to explain a problem to her. Mamita was also trusting to a fault, one who entrusted management responsibility to her subordinates or associates.

I met Mamita through mutual friends in Pro-Life circles. Seems she was looking for someone who had knowledge about setting up an on-line lottery system, something I had studied extensively a few years before but had put in the back burner. When I met up with her on this, I admitted to her that I shelved the study because I was not sure how it would be treated by certain government agencies then, but that I was willing to take up the challenge for her in her capacity as the new chairperson of the PCSO. Simply because I knew she was both honest and forthright.

Coordinating closely with her loyal and trusty (former undersecretary at DSWD) associate, Linda Valenzona, I then set about establishing parameters for setting up the system and designing the RFP for a bid for the equipment, software, and expertise.

But that is grist for another story. During her abbreviated stay in PCSO, she had a few obsessions. One of them was to have the funds to establish a chain of renal care centers in key provinces all over the country to service the problems renal complications posed, especially for the poor folk. One of the key services the typical renal care center was to have would have been the availability of dialysis machines which would have brought this important medical procedure down to the level of the masses.

Anyone who is a diabetic or who has kidney problems knows how important dialysis is especially when the all-important cleansing function of the body ceases to work as well as designed. To top it off, the cost of a single dialysis session is tremendously high and out of reach of the ordinary poor sick person. The idea then was to make dialysis available to all for a nominal fee… or, knowing Mamita, for free.

Thus, one of her mandates to us who composed her small online lottery team was to ensure that enough funds were to be raised to support the establishment and maintenance of at least 10 renal care centers. I recently inquired old friend Serge Valencia — current chair of PCSO — if he knew or heard of this plan, and he had not.

Pity. This would be a wonderful advocacy either by the PCSO or some other good Samaritans who could mobilize to set up even just one renal care center at first in a province where the most people could benefit.

SOMETIME in the mid-80s, news about what (now Magsaysay awardee) Mhd Yunus and his Grameen Bank were doing started filtering back here.

From what I gather from talks I had with several people in the late 80s, interest about how such a venture could be set up here had piqued the curiosity of different people. One of them, if I remember, was Bruce Tolentino, then an Undersecretary or Assistant Secretary at the Department of Agriculture.

Without my realizing it, one other agency in government decided to get off the high horse and put up a similar program, albeit, with local flavor.

Remember my previous blog post about one of my favorite people, the late Mamita Pardo de Tavera? Well, it seems that the Department of Social Welfare and Development had already begun to explore the possibility of bringing the Grameen concept over here, minus the trappings of a bank. When the good woman transferred to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to serve as its chairperson, she brought along with her a trusted Undersecretary, Linda Valenzona, plus a coterie of trained social workers. Me, I only had toyed with the concept, and like a typical alpha male, kept mulling the idea over and over in my mind. These women did what I believe many women are best at: They just went ahead and did it. So, while drawing up the parameters for the online lottery project, I kept looking over my shoulder to see what these busy women were doing in this new field of microfinance.

The group in the PCSO set up a small fund in low nine figures — a much more intelligent and beneficial project than those blasted ambulances that almost never got used as ambulances — as a seed fund. The social workers were trained especially to work with poorer people in the rural areas. The basic model of using groups of five was retained, with each group or different sets of fives placed under a sponsoring NGO. The NGOs took over the task of training, monitoring, following up, etc.

Basic accounting skills and fundamental knowledge of banking procedures followed. The end result? Linda and her group were happy to report to Mamita that the groups all managed to pay back, or, even with slight delays, paid in full. And the amounts given out for projects were typically Grameen-sized: very small. Happiest were the NGOs when they were told that they could recycle the funds into new groups of five but with the provision that the present groups they were working with would serve as trainors.

I bumped into present PCSO chairperson Serge Valencia a couple of months back in birthday party of a mutual friend. When I asked him, he said they were not running the project anymore. He was surprised to learn from me that the social workers brought over by Mamita were still there, and could mobilize in an instant. I wonder if he will take the cudgels for this project.

THE PAST two months saw the passing of two people I have always looked up to and have worked with at one time or the other. Since there are so many things to say about them and the magnificent work and things they stood for, we will visit them and their work from time to time. Thus, this time around, we will just do some sort of an intro — some impressions I have of the two: Dra. Mamita Pardo de Tavera and Dr. Conrado Dayrit.

Mamita, not surprisingly, touched the lives of so many people through her various advocacies, including her personal NGO, AKAP. In fact, it was while attending the wake of Dr. Dayrit that I learned that his son, the former Health Secretary, worked with Mamita in AKAP. Mamita was no high-falluting doctor. She believed in bringing medicine down to the level of the barrio. One product of this constant ministering to the poorest of the poor was a series of little booklets in the vernacular — with graphic pictures — that could be used by even semi-literate people to act as barefoot doctors for the most common ailments. I have a set or two of these booklets somewhere in the house, and they are really a labor of love.

I called Dr. Dayrit Tito Ading because he is the father-in-law of my youngest brother. This wonderful man also became my heart doctor by default, and I would visit him from time to time for free diagnoses (he would bristle at the thought of me paying him for the service!) and random discussions on his favorite topic, the healing properties of virgin coconut oil.

Why do I bring up these two wonderful people? Well, Mamita left behind her NGO, AKAP, which her children have vowed to continue supporting. I know of the wonderful work AKAP has done and is capable of doing. It deserves some measure of support from benevolent friends who wish for Mamita’s work to continue.

The children of Dr. Dayrit, meanwhile, just launched a new foundation in his honor to further some of his advocacies, including further work in the fields of VCO (virgin coconut oil) and herbal medicine. When we consider that Dr. Dayrit provided the ammunition (the analysis and labwork) that proved the soybean lobby wrong about tropical oils, we can say that he really helped keep the coconut industry alive. His new foundation deserves support too, if only for this.

Two great people I really looked up to and have had fond memories working with: Mamita and Dr. Ading. You will hear about them again and again from this corner from time to time.

A COUPLE of days ago, I came across a short article in some forgotten corner of my favorite newspaper. Unfortunately, I failed to set it aside, which explains why I will write about this situation in general terms.

It seems that a fishing village somewhere in Leyte is protesting because a corporate entity won the salvage rights to a shipwreck off their shores. They noticed that their fishing catch dropped dramatically once work on the wreck stopped started (Editor’s note: Thanks to reader Kargante for pointing out the error.). When they tried to stop the salvage work, their own town officials stonewalled them and threatened mayhem. Methinks that misplaced profit motives once again rear their ugly heads to the detriment of the general well-being of a community.

First, let us go into Ecosystems 101 and Web of Life for Dummies.

Coral reefs are living thriving communities that attract a whole spectrum of sea and animal life that feed off and sustain each other in what is known as the Web of Life. The corals provide the fundamental basis for the food chain that goes all the way up to the king of the hill, Man, who feasts off the various fish, crustaceans, and other edible life forms that the coral system makes possible. That is why environmentalists go to extreme lengths to preserve the life of the fragile ecosystem that is the coral reef. Corals propagate by letting go of minute spore-like fragments that look for places to implant themselves in. These spores become new corals in themselves once they find a suitable host habitat, which can mean almost any protruding object in the shallow foreshore areas. That explains why shipwrecks prove to be such irresistible magnets for coral and other life-forms, which explains why the foreshore areas off Leyte Gulf — where a huge naval battle was fought in the closing period of WW ll — are so rich, given that so many ships of the two opposing navies went to Davy Jones locker.

The action of a corporation to make money off the steel to be salvaged off the shipwreck will bring some benefit to the institution concerned, probably some funds to the community and — horrors, pockets of those who made it possible — a few others. But over the longer term, the fishing village will suffer for posterity as the source of its main livelihood is carted away and destroyed.

I suggest that small incidents like these be looked into more thoroughly by concerned citizens, so that the bottomline of one corporation does not get enhanced at the risk of impoverishing an entire fishing village.

IT’S easy to think of companies big and small as existing for no other reason than to make money — and piles of it.

They are greedy, out to pull a fast one on their employees and consumers, and certified tax dodgers.

But after having been involved in the business section for 16 years, I have come to realize that not all of them are like that.

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