Happy 83rd Anniversary to all my brothers and sisters!
39 years ago, I was a wide-eyed freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences in the Diliman Campus of the University of the Philippines. Having heard good things about the special brotherhood of Alpha Phi Omega, I bravely walked-in and applied for membership. To my surprise and disappointment I was rejected by the Grand Chancellor and was told to come back the next semester with my record of grades. I studied hard during that semester for fear of being rejected when I re-apply. That first semester I got my best grades ever in my stay in the university. I got an average of 1.75.
Armed with my good grades, I confidently went back to apply once more and was finally accepted as a pledgee. I did not know that ETA had a strict screening process; you can only be accepted if you are an asset to the fraternity. Either you have the brains or the brawn. A few months after, I was already a proud full-fledged member of APO walking around the campus. Thinking back, the only reason why I joined APO was because of the camaraderie and close brotherhood that I saw among its members in the Greenhouse, our Tambayan in Diliman. The “tagayans” every afternoon accompanied with “war” stories from senior brods made me cut classes just to hang around them. I did not realize that when I took the oath of loyalty to our fraternity’s seal, I was swearing to a lifetime of being a leader, a friend and a servant.
Being a junior brod meant being friends and always ready to serve all your chaptermates, no matter what. Ikaw ang pirming “balaguong” sa happenings. As you transition into being one of the seniors, you take more responsibilities as a leader. In those few years in college as a fraternity member you learned things that were never taught in classrooms. You learned things that were wise or otherwise, but nevertheless valuable lessons that will guide you through your journey of life.
As I graduated and started my own professional career and eventually had my own family, I realized that there is life in APO after the university. As you go out there in the real world, you will meet brethren that will either help you go up or, sad to say, trip you over. That is a reality that we had to face because of the diversity of our membership. Nevertheless, as an alumnus member of APO you have before you a wide array of networks of brethren ready to be tapped.
The role of an APO in our organization can simply be defined by complete adherence to our revered three guiding principles.
To Be a Leader
Being a Leader is not an easy task. It may even be a thankless one. However, it is natural for an APO to lead because of our training in various aspects of our fraternal life. An APO can be a leader in his own chapter or affiliated alumni association. Active involvement in the basic organizational units of our organization will continue one’s ties with our fraternity. Various leadership positions in the sectional, regional or even the national level are open to everyone who wants to share their talents and expertise.
In carving my own niche in life, I never left APO, as most of our brethren had easily had done after graduating from college. I was always involved in alumni association activities wherever I may be. I was pioneering members of Eta Alumni Association, Sigma Chapter Alumni Association and, when I migrated to the United States in 1985, of APO of Greater Los Angeles AA. When I found my way back to our country in 2002, I was elected as President of Sigma Chapter Alumni Association, then elected in 2006 as the Regional Director of the National Capital Administration Region (NCAR) and eventually elected in my present position as APO Phils National President in Tagaytay in 2007. I did all these while running an international business and maintaining a normal well-balanced family life.
So when a brother or sister tells me that “sorry bro I can’t attend this APO function/meeting because I am too busy”, I feel sorry for the brethren because they do not know what they are missing. I always tell them that it is only time management that they need. A few hours a month is all one need to attend that all important alumni association monthly meeting in the area.
To Be a Friend
To be a good leader one must first be a good follower. To be a good follower you must be friends with all your co-workers otherwise the task at hand will be made more difficult and a burden. An APO alumnus must not forget to be a friend first and foremost to his fellow member. Our diverse membership must not be treated as a weakness but more looked at as our strength. In diversity there is strength. Let us all stop the ugly practice of verbally attacking fellow members in the internet or worst in person as it will not do any good for our organization as a whole. We should be united and forget our personal and professional differences if we want to accomplish our goals as an organization.
So next time that you extend your left hand to another APO, sincerely and warmly squeeze his/her hand and look him/her in the eyes as if saying “I am an APO and I am your friend.”
To Be of Service
Both Leadership and Friendship are equally important principles of being an APO, however, Service is the solid foundation of our much vaunted three guiding principles. Service is where the strength of our organization emanates from. Show me a good service project and I will show you hundreds of united brethren actively supporting it. Service is the final reason of being an APO. We draw our strength from it and it makes us complete.
We pride ourselves as the only service oriented fraternal organization. However, when you mention APO to the general populace what do they associate us with? Rumbles? Hazing? Violence? Or running naked in campus? All those things comes to their minds but not a mention of even one of our service projects. Sad isn’t it? If we want to bring our organization to the next level, we need to find that “holy grail” of all service projects that will catapult our organization into greater national awareness.
Let me ask you these; When you mention toothpaste, what comes into your mind. Colgate! Cola drink? Coke! Ballpen? BIC! Cell phone? Nokia! MP3 player? Ipod! These are leading brands in their industry. They have such powerful name recall that is why they are number one in their fields.
Going to service organizations, Gawad Kalinga means building houses for the poor. They are focused on this and this alone. That is why they have thousands of houses built and had affected the lives hundreds of thousands more. They currently have 500million in their bank accounts donated from around the world to support their home building projects.
Another focused organization is Red Cross. They provide blood to those who needs them and save lives. That is the only thing they do and they had mastered the art of doing it. Another successful organization is Operation Smile. They only have one mission, to operate on children with cleft palate. Again they are only focused on this mission and nothing else.
There are valuable lessons to be learned from all of these and APO must find that one service project that will propel it to be the real number one service fraternal organization. Our current approach is a shotgun approach. Medical missions here, dental missions there, treeplanting, coastal cleanups, etc. etc. I am not belittling these efforts, as a matter of fact they are great service projects, but for lack of organizational focus our members are forced to perform different services across the board. We must consolidate our meager resources and just support one national service project. Whatever that may be, it must have something to do with the poor (since a majority of our countrymen are living below the poverty line) and, since we are collegiate-based organization, it also has something to do with education. Those are just two things for our project to succeed; something to do with the poor and education.
The just concluded Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao legs of the 4th APO Alumni Congress had initially identified this possible one service project that our whole organization can support. That is the Adopt-A-Barangay project or Barangay Kalinga ng APO. Details of this project is being worked on right now but it will deal with adopting a community whereby APO will have a comprehensive feeding program for the children, education program for the parents, environmental, health and sanitation improvement program. We, in the Council, hope to present this to you as soon as possible.
TEAMWORK
An APO’s role in our organization can be more effective and do more if a brod or sis is part of a team. A T.E.A.M. means Together Everyone Achieves More. Let me further quote Andrew Carnegie on what Teamwork is.. “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
Each brod and sis must be part of our APO TEAM. Your APO TEAM. We can easily achieve our goals if we are moving forward as one. This will elevate our beloved ALPHA PHI OMEGA into greater heights. Brothers and sisters, my questions to everyone in this room tonight are…
Do you want to be a member of the APO TEAM?
Do you want to bring prestige and honor to our beloved Alpha Phi Omega?
Do you want APO to continue on being the No. 1 Fraternity in our country?
Then be one with us and unite in facing the challenges ahead of us. Support the different national projects being implemented! Pay your Biennial Dues! Show up in Boracay this May 2009 for our 25th NBC!
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