Chairman’s Message during PBSP’s 40th year Anniversary

 

You have much cause for celebration. all throughout the country lies ample and tangible proof of your good work – more than 6,500 projects in health, education, livelihood and the environment, 5.2 billion pesos in grants and donations, 6.4 MILLION LIVES IMPROVED, IN 40 YEARS.

We can find this in Dino Pagatpat, a Cebuano farmer who planted corn and potatoes since he was twelve. With PBSP’s help, Dindo switched to high-value crops, and was able to build a house, send his kids to school, buy a vehicle to carry his produce.

We can find it in Jayson Ferariza, a young volunteer at a tuberculosis clinic run by PBSP. Jayson helps out, unpaid, because he was a TB patient himself. The medicine he helps hand out are too expensive for poor people like him to buy, but the global fund—through PBSP—has pitched in to save more filipinos from this dreadful disease.

And sometimes the lives that PBSP changed were not only those of the poor.

Thirty years ago, A YOUNG MAN in his early 20s named Noynoy Aquino joined PBSP as Executive Assistant to then Executive Director Ernie Garilao. I’m sure that his invaluable experience helped shape the future president’s deep sense of compassion for the poor and the deprived. We are honored to have one of us placed in a position to make a real difference for our country.

Poverty today has grown so large, and has become more complex, compared to what it was 40 years ago. Our response to its alleviation must change correspondingly. Poverty’s effective amelioration will require two things: First, innovative solutions such as the provision of livelihood and microcredit – an advocacy fervently pursued by the late President Corazon Aquino. We honor her and remember her with fondness on her 78th birth anniversary with our support of the PinoyME Foundation. Second, grants and donations must increase to a quantum that will make a difference. The support which the global fund and the USAID provide to combat tuberculosis totaling 3 billion pesos is an outstanding example.

Our goal is to RAISE THE LEVEL OF OUR GRANTS AND DONATIONS to between 4 to 5 billion pesos in the next 5 years, compared with 1.8 billion pesos in the last 5 years.

Whilst our members and their contribution have risen over the years, WE WILL NEED TO RELY ON FOREIGN DONORS FOR MAJORITY of our funding – at a foreign-to-domestic ratio of 4:1.

Let me close by saying that at this juncture in our history – when a new government gives us new hope – the scope for public/private sector partnership in social development can be unprecedented and exceptional. PBSP’s unique role is to work with government, the private sector, and foreign donors in pursuing OUR FOUNDERS’ MANDATE OF A “divine conspiracy FOR development.”

So tonight, we reach out to you in a way that we turn to no one else – for this is a family matter. The poor are part of us, and us a part of them. if we who are attached to PBSP, and are part of its spirit, do not realize that solving poverty is critical to our own lives – if we do not value this duty demanded by Christian charity and social justice – then PBSP has built its house on sand, and its work are the work of time, not eternity.

Thank you and good evening!