Page 11 - LM Confidential Issue April 2015

Ontario Toronto Filipino Parents Slate Metro-wide Conference on Catholic Education By: Tony A. San Juan, OCT
The Filipino Canadian Parents Association in Catho- lic Education (FCPACE) will conduct the First Conference of Filipino Canadian Catholic Students, Youths, Parents and Educators in the Greater To- ronto Area on April 25, 2015 ( Saturday), 8:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. at the Catholic Education Centre Atrium, TCDSB, # 80 Sheppard Avenue East ( Yonge St. / Doris Ave.), North York, Toronto.
The Conference, with its theme: “Meeting the Chal- lenges of Filipino Canadian Students, Youths, Parents and Teachers in Catholic Education” and in coopera- tion with the Toronto Catholic District School Board, aims to engage participants, speakers and resource persons to determine and discuss opportunities, issues, and problems of the members of the Filipino Catholic community. Purposefully, the whole-day affair will cover significant topics and make recommendations relating to achieving student success and enhancing academic performance in Catholic schools.
The complimentary one-day event will include a free meal and a two- part program : 8:00-12:00 a.m.- -a 30- minute Mass, speeches, greetings, networking,
Newbie singer
Neo Domingo
denies dating Mich
Liggayu of Jamich
Up-and-coming singer Neo Domingo was Mama Belle’s guest DJ in ‘Sikat Sa Barangay’ this morning, March 19. He was there to promote his new single ‘Kaching-Kaching’ with
boy group Fifth Dynamics. The hot singer admits that he is fond of joining talent search competitions. In fact, he once competed in Eat Bulaga and has recently joined the McJim’s Dreams Get Real competition. He was also part of an all-male group named Takeoff that competed in a reality
talent show.
Neo shares that one could gain a lot of confidence by
performing live in front of many people.
He says, “Kasi iba talaga ‘pag nasa stage ka like ‘yung
sinasabi ko ‘yung pinaka best na practice o pinaka best na training is ‘pag nasa live ka na. ‘Yun ‘yun eh. Kasi kahit mag- practice ka ng mag-practice sa bahay pero ‘pag nasa stage ka na, minsan ma-ba-blanko ka.”
Neo adds, “Ako nangyayari sa akin ‘yun. Kahit ilang beses ko na nape-perpekto sa bahay, ‘pag nasa stage na ako na- ba-blanko ako, nawawala ako. So iba ‘yun, so ‘pag nasanay ka na doon sa stage, sa harap ng maraming tao, feeling ko ‘yun ang advantage.”
We’re just friends
Neo is recently under fire for allegedly dating Mich Liggayu of YouTube sensation Jamich.
This sparked outrage from Jamich fans. In fact, he and Mich was on the receiving end of numerous nasty comments from enraged fans of the late Jam Sebastian.
Neo appealed to Jamich fans to stop bashing him and his good friend Mich, since the rumor is simply not true.
Neo stresses, “Itigil po natin ‘yung mga pang-ba-bash kay Mich, sa akin. Magkaibigan lang po kami. Sa ngayon, kailangan ni Mich ng pang-unawa dahil sa pinagdadaanan niya.”
“So hindi nakakatulong po ‘yung mga pang-ba-bash kung wala naman po talagang sense talaga ‘yung isyu, kumbaga tulungan na lang natin siya dahil alam niyo naman ‘yung pinagdaanan niya.”
APRIL 2015
and brief entertainment and 12:30 - 4:00 p.m.-- facili- tated group workshops and plenary session-conference group reports. The organizers are encouraging partici- pants to attend the whole day activities especially in the equally- important scheduled afternoon workshop sessions.
FCPACE, organized in November 2013, is com- posed of Filipino Catholic parents, teachers and community leaders in Toronto who are fully commit- ted to engage, involve and support Catholic parents in addressing challenges and concerns in respect of
: authentic faith development & spirituality, school- home adjustment, learning resources, and curriculum understanding for their children’s education and well- being.
For a meaningful participation into this first- ever, Metro-wide forum, interested Filipinos are requested to register, ASAP, by email to Marla Tanuan at : mtanuan@yahoo.com or booking via Eventbrite at : https://eventbrite.ca/event/15969712841/ . ( T. San Juan).
Are We Raising Our People To Become Migrants?
MIGRATE continued from page 1
and there’s always the Internet.
But even so, emotional distance is as tyrannical as ever; and, at least for old men like my friend and myself, the chances of ever seeing absent friends again are unavoidably uncertain.
So that my friend is devastated: a Catholic charismatic, he has kept his Quezon City family close-knit. The four children live nearby; and the family gathers for lunch after Mass every Sunday. His wife tells him, “We can’t tell our children how to run their lives.” But he still can’t understand why his son feels he must go. Though barely 40, the son, a financial analyst, and his wife were two-income, two-car, art- collecting, upwardly mobile Makati professionals. They are migrating, the son tells his father, “for the sake of the child.”
And my old friend asks himself, how have we become a country that can’t assure a future for its grandchildren?
Exporting warm bodies
Labor export was a stopgap many East Asian states—including today’s South Korean powerhouse—took up in the 1970s, while moving from a strategy of import-substituting industrialization to labor intensive exports. Most of our neighbors
have given it up, as their economies picked up speed and gave their workpeople more pleasant alternative occupations. In our country, by contrast, labor export has become a prime development program.
Unlike our vigorous neighbors, we simply have no alternative. Since we have few competitive goods to trade, we export warm bodies instead.
The University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia points out that two policy failures forced this policy on us.
One, we had kept up import substitution in a closed economy even after our neighbors had shifted to an export strategy. Two, we have failed to sustain the population moderation policy we had been among the first East Asian states to adopt in 1969.
These policy failures resulted in weak long-term GDP growth in the context of galloping population growth. From 1970 until 2006, our individual incomes grew at no more than 1.45% net—since over the same 36 years, population growth decreased only slowly, from 3% to 2.1%.
Not just the desperate
More and more of those migrating are no longer just the desperately jobless. They now include well- established young people: middle managers, computer professionals, doctors and nurses, engineers, architects, hospital technicians.
More and more OFWs are college graduates. Yet, typically, first-generation migrants must resign themselves to lower-rank work than they did at home.
We’ve all heard of migrant- doctors who turn into ICU nurses. A newspaper editor I know became for a time an unlikely security guard.
One of my nephews—a civil engineer—rivets the wings on “Bombardier” aircraft at an assembly line off Toronto. What pains him most is the severity of the Canadian winter, and not seeing the sun for weeks on end.
Meanwhile, most every other Metro Manila college seems to be offering courses in nursing, care-
giving, physical therapy, computer programming, sea-faring. Language courses—not just French or Spanish but also German, Japanese and Korean—are more and more popular.
You could even enrol in a unique course that will teach you to speak English with an American accent. And I am certain all these courses serve a practical purpose. But why are we raising our young people to become migrants?
A mobile global order?
Growing interdependence— globalization—is enforcing a world- wide redistribution of jobs, not just in traditional manufacturing but in once non-tradable sectors such as services.
And the optimists say—with Wired Magazine—that the Philippines, far from lagging
behind its vigorous neighbors, is in fact the forerunner of tomorrow’s distributed economy: the herald of a “new mobile global order.”
The Central Bank says demand
is rising for “skilled, professional Filipino manpower.”The Bank valued the dollar-remittance industry at $24 billion in 2014— equivalent to 8% of GDP. Our country is already the third-highest OFW income earner, after India and China and on par with Mexico.
The pessimists worry about the social problems created by families with absent parents, and the “disturbing dependency syndrome” among those these elders have
left behind. Far too many of these dependents have dropped out of the job market—content with living on the manna from abroad.
Even for the economy as a whole,
MIGRATE continued on page 22
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L. M. Confidential