Last March 28, my year as President of JCI Daraga had finally ended. Months of meetings, projects, stress, highlights, lowlights and memories culminated in the official Turn-Over and Induction Ceremonies held in Casablanca Hotel. Preparations for an induction takes months especially since this was to be a joint celebration with JCI Legazpi and Legazpi Dawani. For me, as outgoing president, this meant preparing an audio visual presentation of the year that was, tokens of appreciation for noteworthy members or partners and most particularly my VALEDICTORY ADDRESS. I was stumped-- how can you condense 12 months of flurried frenzied activity in a 5 minute speech? In all honesty it took me a while to find my unifying thought-- what was I going to say? Who was I going to thank? What would I want my presidency to be remembered as? I never expected that the journey of writing my speech would be a very emotional one. After two hours of steady writing I finally finished it -- oddly enough I couldn't go through reading it without tearing up somehow. It is no secret that JCI Daraga was a shambled mess when I inherited it-- factions, politics, misunderstanding and disorganization were some of the biggest problems I faced internally. Coupled with this, Yolanda struck the Philippines only after 2 months after I assumed the position. How could I possible mobilize my organization to become a leading chapter of positive change in the nation when we were broken to begin with? But power on we did mainly because I had a highly qualified, motivated and rearing-to-go-set of officers who were as willing --if not MORE so-- to prove their mettle. We hit the ground running, come November of 2014 we had already rolled 2 of our biggest projects that year: Regional Oplan Kaagapay Drive (for Yolanda Victims) and Project Liwanag (a humanitarian mission that distributed 100 lamps to families with no electrical access and won the JCI PHILIPPINES TEMIONG AWARD for BEST CIVIC INVOLVEMENT PROGRAM). This was just a forecast of what the rest of our year was going to be-- after these two projects we spearheaded numerous more aimed at developing our communities and ourselves. My year of fulfilling the national mission of "Changing the Future Today" has become one of the greatest experiences of my life. Being president of an organization -- specifically of JCI Daraga -- tested, molded and strengthened me. I will not lie, there were times when I really wanted to give up. But I have always been competitive and I wanted to prove that we could overcome our brokenness. And that we did! Every year JCI holds Area and National Conferences. During these events best projects and practices are bid against each other to win in different categories. JCI Daraga brought home it's most number of Dangal Awards (the Southern Luzon Area Award) to date: eight. And subsequently brought home 4 recognitions during the national Temiong Awards Night. I couldn't have asked for a more blessed culmination of my chapter's hard work and determination. Winning those awards didn't just give us recognition from our peers but proved ourselves stronger than what we initial thought. Watching the AVP during the induction ceremonies I found myself tearing up behind the podium. It was as if I was brought back to those moments and made to remember all the hard work, sweat and steely determination we poured out just to make sure we did our projects right. In the end the process wasn't just transformative for our beneficiaries but for us as well. I couldn't have been more proud of my organization and was reminded of the saying "(Jesus) never said it would be easy, (He) said it would be worth it".
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Who is sab_adventures?I have always wanted to write. This will now be a creative outlet-- home to all my arts and crafts. So feel free to browse around my everyday adventures. Interests
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November 2016
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