The Good Balita

By Gwen J. Cariño

What started out with only three bags of groceries and five kilos of rice brought by two students has multiplied to over 17,000 packs of hot meals and 5,000 sandwiches delivered from the kitchens of Enderun Colleges to Antipolo, Pasig, Rizal and other areas hard-hit by “Ondoy.”

It’s amazing how a tiny spark could grow into volunteerism of this magnitude.

Enderun faculty member Bel Castro noted: “One phone call, one text message, one Facebook post – this was how we were able to scale the relief efforts.” This, with good-hearted people who kept knocking on kitchen doors, not even wanting to be named, plus the enthusiasm and passion of students working on their chopping boards and stoves, Castro said, was a winning combination.

The campus is now a bustle of kids on relief mode. Many of the students, their classes suspended, could have easily killed time hanging out elsewhere or at home, but they chose to try make a difference.

“I am so proud of our students. The idea of a relief center for the flood victims was initiated by them, and the faculty and staff merely gave their support,” said Tricia Tensuan, Enderun’s director for marketing. “It is overwhelming how friends of the school also helped out – donations from individuals, corporations and associations just poured in,” she added.

When Tensuan came in Tuesday morning (the second day of relief operations), the students said they needed more meat for the hot meals they were cooking. Before lunch, there were more than enough canned goods from donors to produce thousands of meals. “I am most proud of our Enderun students because of their will to help their countrymen in need – and they acted on it quickly,” she said.

The school asked for donations of canned goods and other processed foods so they wouldn’t spoil easily. Another strict kitchen guideline was not to use dairy products or mayonnaise, again for longer shelf life.

“If not for helpful individuals and groups, our students wouldn’t really have anything to mix, cook and concoct, so we truly owe it to them. They know who they are,” Castro added.

The Enderun community is also thankful it has the facilities to produce quality and quantity meals.

“We are indebted to the school facilities and students whose adrenaline is fired up in our kitchens, and their [the students’] training,” she added.

The rice cooker in one Enderun kitchen can produce up to 1,000 servings in one cooking, and as of last night, about 60 students were producing one meal per second.

Organizations such as Gawad Kalinga, the Philippine Red Cross, the 15th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army, and many others have gone to the school to pick up hot, cooked meals for distribution to over 1,300 families.

If there’s one person who would have been proud of what the students have accomplished during the crisis, it would have been Enderun Colleges dean Lorraine Villanueva. She didn’t live to see what the students have done; she died of cancer a few weeks ago. But it’s her legacy of values that remains evident at Enderun this week.

(This story is from inquirer.net)

 

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