Her mother and most everybody else call her “Baby Doll,” although in typical Pinoy fashion, this nickname has been shortened to “Bidal.”
When I asked exactly how Sittie Nur Dayhanna Saruang Mohamad got the moniker “Baby Doll,” someone who has known her since she was a baby said it was because “she really looked like a baby doll as a young girl,” with her huge eyes and fair skin. But don’t let her looks or her name deceive you. Baby Doll is a fighter, a survivor, who says that for her, “happiness lies in helping others.”
Last Wednesday, Baby Doll was one of seven women (the youngest) recognized as “Unsung Women Heroes” for 2018 by Soroptimist International of the Philippines Region. Revived after a two-year hiatus, the “Unsung Women Heroes” award, says Rep. Lorna C. Silverio of Bulacan, chair of this year’s edition, “focuses on women who are less privileged but struggled anyway to help their communities despite difficulties and limited resources.”
Certainly, Baby Doll lives up to, and even exemplifies, this ideal. Born and raised in Marawi to academician parents, Saidale, a professor of public administration at Marawi State University (MSU), and Norkaya (known as Norkie to everybody) likewise a faculty member of MSU, Baby Doll graduated from the same institution and soon after embarked on field work for the Al Mujadillah Development Foundation (AMDF), an affiliate institution of the women’s group Pilipina.
Among her accomplishments was helping manage the Reproductive Health Youth Base, which provides access to young people to information on RH, while being a field coordinator for AMDF, managing its sexual and reproductive health programs.
When the Marawi crisis broke, Baby Doll shifted her attention to working with internally displaced people, many of them her neighbors, engaging in relief work, psychosocial counseling, and resource mobilization, even as her own family struggled with its own sense of dislocation and insecurity.
“I share this honor with my parents,” Baby Doll acknowledged, including other women who had mentored and guided her in her work. She declared: “Babangon ang Marawi! Mabuhay ang mga taong tumutulong sa iba!” (Marawi will rise again! Long live all who help others!)
Baby Doll might well have been speaking, too, of her co-awardees. Espedita Aparis started off as a fitness trainer and is now involved in helping abandoned children, the disabled and the elderly in her native Davao. From her family’s stall in the public market of Pasig, Riah Bernardez would see street children wandering the alleys. Determined to act, she and a group of volunteer friends decided to regularly gather the children to get them to bathe, read to them, engage in crafts-making, read books, and indulge in sports. Acknowledging that she and her friends all come from humble families, she declared: “We may not have a lot to give, but we give all that we have.”
Zarah Jane De Jesus Juan is a former flight attendant who shifted to the garments business. She then used her experience to share skills with other women in poor communities. “Life is too short to hoard knowledge,” she said. Marjorie Loredo survived a difficult childhood to become a leader of the local group of people with disabilities in Las Piñas, eventually branching out to work with street children and the homeless. “Serving with a full heart,” said Dominga Mayog, an awardee from Nueva Ecija, “has opened new opportunities for me.” Much of her time is taken up with working for the local church and as a community health worker.
Finally, Mamerta Samson is what can be called a “natural leader,” parlaying her post as the president of the local Rural Improvement Club in Norzagaray, Bulacan, to initiate income-generating projects for other women in her town and organize feeding and gift-giving programs for the most destitute.
As Soroptomist leaders pointed out, it is easy enough to award prominent and nationally known women achievers. But women who labor in obscurity, who are “unsung” despite their accomplishments, are deserving, too, of our admiration and respect. Yes, women like Baby Doll!