The Eye and The Call

January 6, 2010

            

       Despite this “stormy” year, a hero was conceived from the spirit of volunteerism and has overwhelmed Filipinos and other nationalities alike. This heroism has invested additional huge value to the Philippine bank called Pinoy Pride.

 

             Cable News Network (CNN), the most prominent United States based television network providing 24-hour news coverage, awarded the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year to Efren Peñaflorida, who started a “pushcart classroom” in the Philippines to bring education to poor children as an alternative to gang membership.

 

             CNN Hero of the Year Award, already on its third year, is a tribute by the international news organization to selfless humanitarian acts of individuals from different countries.

 

 Ab Initio: From the Beginning

        Efren Peñaflorida, middle child in a family of three children, was born to a father who worked as a tricycle driver and to a mother who supported the family as a laundrywoman. Because of financial difficulties, he almost had to drop out of grade school.

 

             Through the support of Club 8586, a volunteer group based in Cavite City, and from World Vision, a group which matches sponsors to needy children, Peñaflorida was able to finish his elementary and high school education.

 

             When he was young, Peñaflorida was occasionally bullied and beaten by street gangs. This prompted him to decide to come to the aid of street children and rescue them from poverty and neglect through education. He also wanted to return the fruits of his life nourished by people outside his bloodline not to his relatives but also to other people.

 

 At 16, he founded the Dynamic Teen Company (DTC). DTC first used a bike with a sidecar for its street classes, but the tires would run flat and the chains fall off. With this reason, the group decided to use a pushcart instead. Pushcart classroom aims to teach basic reading, writing and hygiene to over 1,500 children in slums and on the street using the kariton (pushcart) where all teaching materials are placed.

 

 Peñaflorida’s group, DTC, was first recognized after winning the Bayaning Pilipino award for its heroic work in bringing education to poor children in Cavite. After DTC was featured in the media, the group started receiving private donations to support their operations. These have enabled the group to increase the number of its pushcart classrooms from two to four. But before, DTC members had to sell old bottles and newspapers to earn money and sustain their operations.

 

 

 After twelve years, DTC has grown. It was able to gain 10, 000 volunteer members who continue to uplift the lives of poor children by teaching them how to read and write in the streets.

 

 Peñaflorida is now a public school teacher in Cavite but still continues his pushcart classrooms on weekends. He could recall that DTC volunteers had to endure discrimination and even being branded as “trash collectors” with their pushcarts whenever they carry out their noble mission.

 

The public, the focus of his goal, took notice of his ingenious way of bringing free and quality education to the poor children by nominating him to the CNN’s list of heroes for this year. When CNN early this year announced its annual search for Heroes, Club 8586 nominated Peñaflorida.

 

Peñaflorida bested nine other contenders from different countries for the Hero of the Year award after getting the highest number of online votes, which reached 2.75 million in seven weeks. Choosing the recipient of the award was based from number of online votes in the CNN Heroes’ website. He is the first Filipino to become a nominee of the annual CNN Heroes’ awards and the first Filipino to win the top prize.

 

Peñaflorida received $100,000 and vowed that 90 percent of the cash grant would go to DTC and the remainder would go to the Church.

 

Peñaflorida has been a good example of a person who was not afraid to commit himself to the passion of altruism despite the internal contradiction that he could earn more money if he would engage himself to works that would satisfy his self-interest. He has justified that being an icon does not need someone to become wealthy, famous, nor politically powerful. He has ignited the truth that by simply helping others, someone could change the way the world moves.
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