So much to invest one’s life for

I thought that England would have cheaper gas prices. The past two days as a visitor in London, however, has taught me that oil producing countries do not always subsidize what their people consume. Gas here is P100 per liter and they have British Petroleum!

I also thought that England would be a model of efficiency. After all, Hong Kong was run by them as a colony and British rule produced a highly productive and efficient system. In fact, Hong Kong citizens ended up hiring Filipino domestics. But visiting Great Britain just proved to me that there are flaws in every country no matter how advanced, just somewhat different in nature or form. It came as a shock to this Third World citizen that it would take two hours for my small group to clear Immigration!

It was not that Immigration officers were making it difficult for tourists to get their travel documents processed; in fact, they were friendly. It was more systemic. There were several hundreds of non-British nationals who arrive but only a few Immigration officers were there to process all of us. I thought to myself that our NAIA 1 had taken a bad bashing from everyone about being one of the world’s worst, but our visitors get better Immigration service. And although we were again evaluated as somewhat deficient with our security measures, we don’t get bombs in our planes, or hijackers who ram our planes into buildings.

Filipinos have much to be grateful for, and have much to complain about, too. Even when we compare ourselves to other nations, we have many that we find better and many we find worse. Filipinos who want to migrate are choosy – most apply to a few countries and avoid many more. Intuitively, I believe Filipinos know that the Philippines has great value but many just need more opportunities to build their dreams. Even those who become Overseas Workers keep wishing they could return. Just stay in the arrival area of our international airports and sense the joy of our arriving workers.

The most suffering of our people are the very poor. Strangely, they are less complaining about their lot. They suffer in silence so much so that many of us are not jolted enough to see or hear them. And despite having a most active, aggressive and attention-grabbing media, the poor without a voice do not find many champions among them. In tri-media, and in the Internet, poverty is less a topic than politics. Many who write about the suffering of people simply use that as a reason to heap blame and criticism against their pet political peeves, those they are paid to attack, or personalities who have embarrassed them in some way. The sincere ones are easy to spot – their lives bear out the principles they mouth.

In London, Oxford specifically, are gathered those rare ones who disagree passionately with the wrong they see around them and then dedicate their lives to solving them. Their voices of criticism are listened to and respected because their criticisms are dwarfed by their contributions to the solutions. This week at Oxford are people who have proof of concept for solutions they offer and, beyond that, are poised to create bigger impact than their past successes. And these game-changers are matched with social entrepreneurs who dare to fund innovative and courageous initiatives that show promise of resolving many of the world’s problems.

The foundation of giant eBay, the Skoll Foundation, is once again putting together almost 1,000 men and women with shared noble visions and the courage to pursue them, people who have made big money and people they are investing heavily to make their hard-earned money serve humanity beyond their families. These are people who know the most serious problems, acknowledge and debate them, then put their lives and wealth on the line to address the problems. With these people, through their advocacies or wealth, talk is cheap and complaints even cheaper unless followed up with the right action. That is also why, despite their awesome expertise or wealth, they seldom are bothered by whiners and gripers.

It is such a rare source of pride that a home-grown initiative is placing the Philippines, and Filipinos, on the special map of achievers and game-changers in the global community. A special 2012 awardee of the Skoll Foundation is Gawad Kalinga as an outstanding global model of social entrepreneurship and especially cites its capacity to draw out the best of people. Volunteerism grounded on the nobility of the human spirit has allowed Gawad Kalinga to help hundreds of thousands of the very poor and building up a collective concern poised to help millions more. BBC’s One Square Mileprogram has already interviewed Tony Meloto and Luis Oquinena, Chairman and Executive Director respectively of GK, and will air this globally on April 6.

Yes, there is much to complain about, much to attack. There is also so much to admire, to be inspired at, and to invest one’s life for.