Inspirations

Monuments, statues, portraits, and similar artistic creations are primarily mnemonic tools built lest the community they have been intended for forget the significance of the figure or event they represent. They also give viewers a visual configuration of the person/event. Obviously they add an aesthetic character to any given milieu and eventually, they serve as powerful symbols of the institution they inhabit, resonating profound meanings, core values and convictions among the members of its community.
The man in whose honor the university’s Engineering building was named must be smiling from heaven, happy to know that a bust in his likeness now occupies pride of place at the entrance. Not that he would have wanted it, considering that men of his kind usually go in humility mode all their life. It’s just that the living find him extremely worthy of such an honor. Installed on December 8, 2010, this sculpture of the founder of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SSVP), Blessed Frederic Ozanam, is an icon long overdue. While the building bore his name since its erection in 1979, even just an iota of information about the man was nowhere to be found within the structure.
On the occasion of its 150th anniversary, the SSVP–Philippines came up with this bust project, finally filling the conspicuous vacuum. Mounted on a granite pedestal, it gives everyone an idea of how this charitable Frenchman looked like; the accompanying brief biographical plaque outlines who he was and what he accomplished.
Visual signifiers like Ozanam’s ought to multiply around the campus to honor those who deserve recognition and saturate our vision and memories with images that will articulate our common heritage and identity. The more prominent existing ones to date are St. Vincent’s, George Lucas Adamson’s and Ozanam’s. Surely, there are many more that have made remarkable and historic contributions to the development of the University through their respective fields of expertise. The source of candidates is a vast fertile field: administrators, alumni, former faculty and even former employees. It is only a matter of perspicaciously selecting the most deserving.
The manner of honoring them is not limited to busts alone. Naming hallways, rooms, pathways, gardens and other venues after them is another good option. The most hospitable means, because it can accommodate several names, is an institutional museum. From the most noble to the most unsung, it can provide the appropriate niche for many.
Adamson University is going on 80. About time it morphs into a place where role models and those they are supposed to uplift live and interact in close quotidian association - an environment that gives off a nostalgic, inspiring and artistic vibe.

"Tagay, Sangkay"

Acrylic, 2011

"Hang-aw"

“Hang-aw” Art Exhibit Held at AdU Art Gallery


Composed of painters and sculptors, the Kasikasi Art Association of Tacloban, Leyte is currently exhibiting its artworks at the Adamson University Art Gallery located along San Marcelino St., Manila. Dubbed “Hang-aw: East Visayan Artistic Expressions and Impressions,” the show opened last June 22 and will run until July 16, 2010. Mrs. Lourdes Supetran, owner of ACS Manufacturing Corp. and Atty. Sol Arboladura, representative of Mayor Alfredo Lim, opened the exhibit together with AdU President Fr. Gregg L. Bañaga, Jr., C.M.
The participating artists are Ernie Ybañez, Billy Pomida, Crispin Asensi, Rico Palacio, Archie Zabala, Archie Prisno, Jun Olimberio, Dante Enage, Jasmine Diaz and Raul Agner. Their artworks range from hyper-realist (Olimberio and Pomida) to stylized figurative (Agner, Prisno, Enage, Zabala, Asensi) and from semi-abstract (Ybañez, Diaz) to pure abstract (Palacio).
“Hang-aw,” which means to peer from a window, was conceptualized as a show that would give the Manila audience a chance to view artworks from the province, art being mainly Manila-centered. On the artists’ part, the visit to Manila would be an opportunity to meet an urban audience and explore the Manila art scene. The exhibit is also a fund-raising event in support of the University President’s “Bridge Program” scholarship assistance.
No theme was set for this exhibit. Instead, each artist was free to choose his own subject or idea to paint or sculpt. Some artworks depict local scenes and people. Others are commentaries and statements about important issues in life and society. Still others dwell on personal experiences and memories that the artists feel emotionally attached to.
This is the Kasikasi Art Association’s first foray into the big city but it intends to make the Manila exhibit an annual event. Kasikasi was started in the year 2000 and continues to be a prime mover in the local (Leyte) art scene. RDA

Exhibition Notes
Raul Agner

Peering from a window is a metaphor for getting an observantly larger view outside of one’s limited frame of reference. This is what “Hang-aw: East Visayan Artistic Expressions and Impressions” is all about.
“Hang-aw,” the Waray equivalent of the Tagalog “dungaw” is an attempt to afford the big city audience a chance to experience and appreciate art from outside the Manila art scene. Paintings and sculptures by members of the Kasikasi Art Association of Tacloban, Leyte are featured in this show. Diverse, style-, technique- and thematic choices-wise, the artworks are either deep personal statements or simply an aesthetically stylized mode of treating what is rather mundane or usual.
On the other hand, the visiting artists get to feel the beat of the big city, witness its art scene and interact with an urban audience. All these help them expand their visual vocabulary and absorb healthy influences which can enrich their artmaking once they’re back in their creative comfort zones – their studios. “Hang-aw,” in a sense, is pretty much a two-way passage.
For sure the works in this show support the fact that while art in this country is mainly Manila-centered, there are artists in the regions who continue to toil, creating artworks that are just as skillfully executed and sensibly imagined as their city counterparts. If exhibits such as this can be held more often in more venues presenting as many other province-based artists as possible, art enthusiasts and the general public alike will have an expanded view and a more accurate picture of what Philippine art looks like in its entirety.

A Leadership School for the Poor

Adamson University’s School of Good Governance for Social Development
by Raul Agner 5/6/10

A tricycle driver cannot sit as representative in Congress, or so Commission on Elections Chair Jose Melo thinks. The driver, he reasons out, does not possess the necessary knowledge and skills to function effectively as such.
Adamson University’s School of Good Governance for Social Development believes otherwise. With their experiential learnings and given enough time and proper mentoring, tricycle drivers, or any lowly worker for that matter, can be transformed into effective leaders who can truly represent their own kind, yes, even in Congress.
But this is only among the many goals that AdU-SGGSD’s vision hopes to accomplish for at its core is the ultimate aim of nation-building through poverty alleviation.
Fr. Nonong Fajardo, C.M., the Vincentian priest who came to be known as “Fr. Riles” for helping railway squatters get a fair relocation deal from the government, has come full circle. Now the director of Adamson’s Integrated Community Extension Services (ICES) whose outreach arm is the Vincentian Center for Social Responsibility (VCSR), he has tapped the entire University community in organizing the same evictees into a federation of self-sustaining communities with some assistance from government and business. The former informal settlers, some 100,000 families in all, are now housed in sprawling relocation sites known as Northville and Towerville in Bulacan and Southville in Laguna and Cavite. Since relocation in 2004, they have been receiving all sorts of assistance designed to help them build their communities largely through their own efforts.
The latest project that Fr. Nonong has conceived for them is the School of Good Governance for Social Development.

Northrail/Southrail Project
The saga of Northville and Southville residents began with their gradual eviction from the slums along Metro Manila’s railway tracks. This was to give way to the implementation of the Northrail and Southrail Project that would cut across the metropolis from as far north in Pampanga and south in Laguna. In these mass movements, homegrown leaders whose style, engagement methods and processes developed as they journeyed with their communities emerged. That these leaders led their people from homelessness to a formal community setting with some degree of success proves they have both innate and acquired leadership and community-building capabilities. Today in fact, the relocation communities can boast of livelihood, health care, entrepreneurship, finance, sports and many other programs that are securely in place largely on their account. Unfortunately, no one has tapped the richness of this phenomenon which actually holds concepts, processes and solutions that are potential paradigms for freeing people, and the nation as a whole, from the clutches of poverty.

Vision and Mission
The School of Good Governance for Social Development is an attempt to mine this lode of community-centered leadership practices and experiences with the assistance of other stakeholders.
During the past few months, the ICES and VCSR together with the key leaders of the relocation sites had formulated the vision-mission of the School. They came up with this vision: “A school of community-based leaders who facilitate knowledge formation among themselves and their communities in order to deepen and develop with them new directions towards nation-building.” The statement seeks the institutionalization of the skills and learnings of seasoned leaders. Using a systemic approach and marrying institutional leadership approaches with community-tested ways, the end-goal is to solve poverty and bring back the off-tangent democratic venues and processes to their original path where stakeholders participate through informed decision making. The organizational and leadership skills of born leaders will be enhanced and harnessed so that these same resources can be passed on to others who will continue to lead their people towards a more dignified life. The learning process will be horizontal, engaged and community-led, and the leaders themselves will serve as faculty. The Adamson community, as well as other experts in their field of competence, will be there as a support group.
A six-pronged mission statement accompanies the vision: to provide a venue where seasoned community-leaders can share and formulate theories out of their experiences and learnings; to discover new directions and emerging cultural and national patterns out of the experiences of the leaders and other stakeholders; to implement their processed knowledge together with their communities into new paths towards nation-building; to organize all these initiatives and peoples’ movements into a nerve center so that it can be replicated to the other sectors of society; to strategize and pull together all their social and intellectual capital towards higher political engagements; to provide intellectual, managerial and technical skills to our leaders.

Training

AdU-SGGSD started with a one-week trainors’ training-seminar after Easter. Since then, monthly sessions have been conducted to monitor and plan out an improved partnership with their constituents and other stakeholders in the relocation sites like those who are in charge of health, religious life, education, peace and order, the youth, the elderly, the environment, waste management, etc. These sectoral leaders will have monthly sessions for planning, implementation and evaluation. The School, whose physical center is at Adamson University, acts as nerve center for all the activities of the leaders and the communities.
Fr. Nonong says that “SGGSD is one of Adamson’s many concrete responses to poverty alleviation and nation-building. This is leading with a social conscience. This is re-engineering Philippine social structures through democratic processes available for all and with all stakeholders of development.” Adamson University itself has been deeply involved in the relocation communities. It has been sharing its academic, technical and human resources since the VCSR was established in 2007. Volunteer faculty, employees, administrators and students have been conducting seminar-workshops and various activities regularly for the benefit of the residents.

Curriculum
The initial program of the SGGSD is a one year training that leads to a Certificate in Good Governance for Social Development.
The first three months is devoted to Personal Engagement and Values Formation. This broad area takes up Human Rights (Self-Knowledge, Human Rights and Obligations, International Bill of Rights, Philippines Constitution Bill of Rights, Spirituality of Social Development, St. Vincent de Paul) and Capability Building (Facilitating Meetings, Parliamentary Procedures, Resolution Making, Basic Accounting, Basic Computer, Public Speaking. Basic English).
Following this are five months spent for Community Engagement which tackles Issues of Relocation Sites (Education, Youth, Livelihood, Women, Peace and Order, Political Engagement, Health, Waste Management, Elderly, Religious Groups, Urban Development).
Finally, two months are allotted for National and International Engagement which covers two areas: Venues for Peoples’ Participation (Barangay, Local Government Unit, Planning and Budget, Provincial Government, International Commission on Housing and Development, World Urban Forum) and Organizing Political Rights (People’s Organizations, Homeowners Association, Local Housing Board, Provincial level Engagement, National Coalitions and Federations, Party List).

Future Possibility
Note that the last item is Party List. This brings us back to Melo’s dilemma of the tricycle driver in Congress. With AdU-SGGSD’s vision and goals coming in crystal clear, it is not really impossible to send a leader from society’s less privileged sector to government institutions like Congress. Not that AdU-SGGSD’s agenda is to eventually engage in politics; but even at this incipient stage, the School is already confirming beyond reasonable doubt that what people like Chairman Melo think cannot be done are doable and possible.
If someday a leader from an impoverished community who was honed in the humble halls of the School of Good Governance for Social Development crosses paths with fellow representatives who trained at University of the Philippines or Asian Institute of Management in the hallowed halls of the Batasang Pambansa, Fr. Atilano “Nonong” Fajardo, C.M. would be the least surprised.

(Individuals and organizations that wish to volunteer, partner with or extend financial support to ICES-VCSR may contact the office at tel.:400-0919 and 524-2011 loc 259).

The 1st St. Vincent de Paul National Awards

"Mambobola," pen and ink on paper, 21"x29", 2009

Green is the new Adamson Blue

Adamson News/NOV 09 issue/Editorial

In environmental advocacy, there are myriad ways to express one’s statements and convictions. Some bare their flesh to get their eye-popping message across while others invade the streets armed with screaming placards and vocal chords. Still others prefer the quiet but potent tentacles of the www to engage a cyber audience, or lobby in congress hoping that its so-called Honorables will forego their own narrow interests and support what is good for the majority.
Like the poet Carl Sandburg’s fog that “comes on little cat feet,” the formal launch of Adamson University’s latest environment-friendly endeavor resorted to no hype save for a solemn blessing. On a rainy November 5 afternoon, the university’s top and mid-level administrators witnessed the inauguration of the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP), said to be the second of only two existing among the schools in the country today.
This Php10 million watershed initiative adds a new badge of honor to the University but for now, the movers and shakers behind this project are content to relish the completion of one that challenged the university’s resources and demanded their resourcefulness and determination to see it finished. Sharing its technological, environmental, economic and even educational benefits with other schools is a future move.
Simply put, the STP collects 250 cubic meters of dirty liquid per day from various septic tanks in the first few chambers of the plant which is located in the narrow strip between the estero and the back of OZ building. As the collected water flows from one chamber to another, it becomes cleaner and clearer until it reaches the final stage wherein it is ready to be sent back to the toilets for reuse in flush tanks or for watering plants. The plant in effect returns 200 cubic meters per day of reusable water - which is the same amount of clean water that will be saved by the university once the STP operates in full. Engr. Merlinda Palencia, chair of the Chemical Engineering department and coordinator of the project, said that the structure is good for some 20 years while the equipment in the adjacent control room will last five years.
There are several messages that this new facility conveys.
First, it shows how resolute the university is in its attempts to come up with a clean campus environment. Late last year, it introduced and encouraged the practice of the 5S program, the Japanese-inspired systematic cleaning up of the workplace and surroundings. To that basic effort, Adamson has now added a higher level of environmentally sound practice that comes close to the kind that some big industries have. It is therefore in solidarity with the bigger national and global push to clean up and preserve the environment.
Second, by virtue of its being built with an all-Adamsonian cast of engineers, consultants and administrators, the project attests to the competency of Adamson alumni engineers and the excellent quality of the school’s engineering education that these alumni went through in their college days. Homegrown technical professionals doing a big project for their Alma Mater, nothing could be more inspiring.
Lastly, although the University is the primary beneficiary of the STP, the outside community will also be able to share in a cognate effect: the minimization of the pollution of the Estero de Balete and of the Pasig River that the former is a tributary of. Wastewater disposal to the estero will be considerably lessened.
As Adamson steps up its green cause, not because it is the hip thing to do these days but because the dangers that can come from a damaged environment are real, imminent and as fearsome as the “2012” flick, it is important that every member of the Adamson community throw in his share. No matter how minimal, the contribution of each will count and gather weight when put together.
As a school, our official colors are blue and white to symbolize our search for excellence but these do not prevent us from going green.