‘Light’ comes to village

How big a difference do we make in the lives of other people?

On this day in Manila, five persons and a group will receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award, a yearly presentation recognizing Asian volunteers and leaders whose work, life and dedication have made a significant or game-changing impact on the lives of others or on the communities they serve. For 2014, they are: journalist Hu Shuli (China), minority champion Saur Marlina Manurung (Indonesia), heritage protector Omara Khan Masoudi (Afghanistan), progressive school runners The Citizens Foundation (Pakistan), and environmental lawyer Wang Canfa (China).

The sixth awardee, the only Filipino among this year’s recipients, boasts of a compelling story of devotion to education and loyalty to his wards. Randy Halasan, the awardee for Emergent Leadership, is only 31, a prodigiously young age for one who, because of the dedication to service he has shown, has built a stunning legacy of service.

After graduating from the University of Southeastern Philippines in Davao City, Halasan was sent to the village of Pegalongan in 2007 as one of two teachers for Grades 1 to 6. To place this assignment in context, one needs to know that Pegalongan is an almost isolated village inhabited by members of the Matigsalug tribe. Although the village’s name in the tribe’s native language means “the place from which the light shines,” Halasan found Pegalongan with no electricity, among many other missing services.

From Davao City, it would take Halasan seven hours to get to the mountainside location of Pegalongan Elementary School, a trip that included a combination of bus and motorcycle rides, long walks and fording two dangerous rivers. He admits he thought of asking to be reassigned the moment he got there.

Just like him, the schoolchildren of Pegalongan had to travel for hours to get to the schoolhouse; tired and famished from their trip, they often would fall asleep in class. This moved Halasan. Realizing that the Matigsalug people needed his help and education was the best way to help them, he decided to stay put.

In the following years, he became the head teacher and pushed for the expansion of the school, which soon had nine classrooms instead of two, eight teachers and over 200 students. There’s even a high school for the Matigsalug now. Also, at the cost of spending time away from his own family, Halasan lobbied the parents to keep their children in school instead of following the old tradition of arranging early marriages for their brood.

A time comes when a teacher looks around and seeing there’s so much to be done beyond the classroom, acts accordingly. Thus Halasan decided to take his crusade a step further: to improve the lot of the people, not just of the students’. “If I only focus on education, nothing will

happen, the children will continue to go hungry,” Halasan is quoted as saying in the award citation. To help the village people with their constantly precarious food situation, he led teachers in donating seeds and pushed the townspeople to plant more useful fruits and vegetables. Collaborating with the local farmers’ group, he attracted aid from both private and public entities.

Today, Pegalongan can boast of a village-owned corn-and-rice mill, seed bank, cattle for raising, and even horses for transportation. Halasan’s example has even led the people to think about protecting the environment, with a forest rehabilitation program that covers over a hundred hectares.

This young man came to this faraway location to educate children, but went further to uplift the people’s lives, giving them a better hold on sustaining their way of life, protecting the natural bounty around them and, with the graduating students promising to assert their people’s

ancestral rights, to preserve the very essence of the Matigsalug tribe, honoring their past while looking to the future.

The teacher who “stayed” in Pegalongan is still on that mountain, leading by example, truly caring for Pegalongan and its people, doing everything neither with fanfare nor for financial reward. “Because of one highly motivated civil servant, the village has truly become what its name suggests,” the citation reads.