AUGUSTUS PADILLA TIAMBENG
I was very young when my family introduced me to God. Catechism at the Jesuit-run Ateneo and learning “Our Father” in Prep helped to form a clear concept of God as our Father, making us all part of a huge family, looking after each other as brothers and sisters.
As the son of an army officer living outside Camps Crame and Murphy (now Aguinaldo) in the 60’s, I played with young boys my age, sons of enlisted soldiers and military personnel. They walked to the camp’s public school while I rode a school bus to attend private school. They sometimes gave up play to help their mothers sell food or goods to augment income, as they came from big families and were often in debt. Early on, I became aware of poverty and social disparities. The image of one big family helping one another under God began to dim somewhat.
At the school fence in grade school, poor children would come to ask for sandwiches or food or trade their toy combat spiders or slingshots for money. While my schoolmates would share their food with them, we were often discouraged from these interactions for fear of security.
The questions became more frequent and then disturbing. Where was the charity we were told in Religion to practice? I often asked my parents why some people had “hard” lives.
My High School and College were not limited to academic pursuits. Some learning was lived …through the First Quarter Storm, with violent demonstrations ensuing in killings as law enforcers struggled to maintain peace in the streets. “Social Revolution” appeared in the landscape as an option to quelch the exploitation of people experiencing poverty.
While working on a Socio-Economics research paper, I encountered workers on strike at a textile factory over the practice of their employers of hiring and rehiring them and keeping them on temporary status, thus avoiding having to pay benefits. As the angry employees kept their picket lines and shouted their demands, the company brought in scabs or replacement workers until, at some point, the security guards fired some shots. The tragic result left three dead and some wounded on the side of the strikers.
That fateful day, I learned that one must fight for one’s rights and that laws, supposedly protectors of the oppressed, have ‘intentional loopholes’ that the powerful elite will use to their advantage. The experience was pivotal to my decision to pursue the social development path.
The most significant influence of the Catholic religion on my ‘development’ journey is the Biblical parable of ‘the sheep and the goats’.
Matthew 25: 37 – 40.
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and not give you anything to eat, or thirsty and not give you anything to drink?’ ‘When did we see you a stranger and not invite you in or naked and not clothe you?’ ‘When did we see you sick or in prison and not visit you?
the king will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for any of these least brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
I finished my college course in Communications using mass media (with a focus on Development Communication research). Together with four other co-graduates, I was blessed to be invited to join the newly established Department of Local Government and Community Cooperatives Development. We did the Performance Audit on our elected local officials – without political patrons and biases and with integrity.
My almost 50 years of public service have included work at the Development Academy of the Philippines, the World Bank-funded Samar Integrated Rural Development project, and the Department of Agriculture’s International Agricultural Development Coordination Office for mobilizing international funds.
Through a project of the Pioneer Development Foundation for Asia and Pacific, I successfully tested a solutions approach to bringing disadvantaged farm communities into the mainstream economy through forward marketing contracts.
In Turkey, I was privileged to prepare the United Nations Country Team Development Assistance Framework for Turkey. In various development consultancies, I had the opportunity to prepare projects for European Union funding for local NGOs and administrations. In 1982, I immersed myself in masteral studies on Development in the Netherlands with focus on Regional Planning and Regional Economics.
Now, at 70 and at life’s curtain call, I look back at almost five decades of productive endeavors to pursue justice for the disenfranchised person, mindful of his dignity as a child of God. Regardless of the results, I feel privileged to have had the chance at a life of advantage but which I ignored.
Sent from my iPad