Reading and Nation-Building

"Contributing to build a strong nation is quite a challenge. It demands much time and effort. Nevertheless, I am standing up for the challenge!"  

After serving a two-year term in the Board of Regents of Western Mindanao State University , I felt I have nowhere to go. I just earned a degree in Political Science and Law School is quite uninviting that time. I was in constant quandaries and my mind was suffering from extreme preoccupation on a lot of things. This situation led me drifting to a great crossroad  forcing me to craft a decision that will change my life forever. Two options are before me - pursue higher studies to get high paying jobs or go back to my first love. 

Reading is my first love. It has been a hobby since I was 3 and I consider book as my guiltiest pleasure. For me, any literary piece printed in paper and bound together are the most important gift from God, like treasures far more precious than gold and silver. At that moment when I was in that intersection, I encountered a deep feeling of longing, longing to flip more pages and longing to be with just sweet words written in old and musty pages. I cannot bargain reading for anything else in the world. I need to pick up my first love where I dropped it. I need to go back again. 

Finally, the time had come that I had to execute my plan, I retreated from the urban jungle of Zamboanga City and went eastward. With just a backpack, two pairs of shirts, few pants, a pair of shoes, a laptop and  Php 10,000.00 I decided to sojourn in Pagadian City. I decided to start a new life go back to my first love with just that. 

The first two weeks are great. I have constant hops on coffee shops and restaurants where I engage myself with amazing gastronomical treats. Friends are just around the corner waiting for a go signal on where to go next. It was like a scene in a biblical parable where I immersed myself to riotous living. The first two weeks drifted me again apart from my first love. 

Supposed, what comes next to great days are better days, but mine became bitter. I tasted harsh realities of life. I lost some friends. I lost some weight. I cannot sustain anymore a vain life full of luxuries and extravagance. Without any income flowing towards my coffers and with my daily spending, the money intended to fund my quest to be with an intimate moment with my first love was gone in the wind. Then again, the situation brought me again to where I should be in the very first place. 

I decided to start buying books from the remaining amount in my pocket. Due to the sudden depletion of my money, I found myself not in the shelf section of the bookstore but in the bargain section. On the first dive, I found a 1970 classic book by Stephen Covey entitled Seven Habits of Highly Effective People sold at Php 99.00. I took it. Then I searched again. This time, I failed to find a book that suits my taste so I ended  up exploring the shelf section instead. I was randomly rolling my eyeballs on the colorful books displayed in the shelf when a blue-colored book  in paperback caught my attention. It was The Pilgrimage by Paolo Coelho. I was a Coelho fan when I was in College and I collected all his books except for one, except for The Pilgrimage. It was like luck guiding the direction of my vision towards the sought-after literary piece. Then I took the two books in the counter, paid the due, took the books then went out the store. 

I immediately went home, cleaned my bed, arranged everything and started reading. After two days of home stay with just the two books, I felt a divine intervention. The two books were not just ordinary books. It was heaven-sent designed to perfectly suit me, tailored to help me build a new life. Its like a specific manual on what should I do first and what steps to undertake afterwards. It was a eureka moment. 

The two books taught me that the choice I took on pursuing my first love was shallow but can be deepened. They ushered new ideas on how to expand to not just benefit myself but others as well. The ideas pedaled my feet towards starting a new movement, a movement of promoting reading though generosity. Those ideas gave birth to Project LaTAG. 

Project LaTAG was intended to promote leadership, reading included, through giving. Our movement is simple yet effective. We have volunteers to gather books and other educational materials from generous individuals, then bring it to a community where reading is a strange hobby. Project LaTAG identifies itself as a conduit between the generous and the child in need. Our task does not end on delivering the donations. We conduct reading sessions, story-telling and other workshops so the children will slowly adopt and love the culture of reading. We have a vision. We dreamed that a library will become a common sight in the barrio like basketball courts that proliferates everywhere even in the most  remote communities. We dreamed that instead of holding bolos, rakes and shovels in their early ages, they will take hold of books and enrich themselves with the essential lessons to have a guaranteed success in life. 

We were adamant with the movement, until when we realized that the money from donors cannot anymore suffice the ever growing movement. The group has to look for ways on how to generate funds for the organization. Truly, great ideas are born out of great time of necessities. In order to bring the advocacy closer to the youth and to help come up with substantial amount of money to fund Project LaTAG we started Stelle Trainings. 

Stelle Trainings is a  promising organization which specializes on equipping our youth to become agents of nation-building through capacity-building initiatives. We started formulating training modules and training designs for Student Leadership, Youth Leadership, Journalism and  Parliamentary Procedure. We went from one school to another to present proposals to schools. Getting nods from the principals are very hard for a starting entity like us but we eventually weathered the storm. After months of establishing presence, we are now making a name in Zamboanga del Sur. Before, it was us going to schools presenting our designs, but after few months of hard work, its now the schools getting us and asking us to help them train their leaders. 

Now, Project LaTAG and Stelle Trainings are growing. After roughly one year, we have built one school library, currently building three more libraries, planning to build more libraries, currently supply school needs to roughly fifty-five children in Region IX and trained 1,200 student-leaders all around the Region . From the small pleasure of pursuing reading, it grew up to become a movement in Zamboanga Peninsula, and it continues to grow.