Doing good

“Our dream is to someday make ourselves irrelevant,” says Daphne Ceniza Kuok, one of the founders and board members of International Care Ministries. ICM, for 20 years and unknown to many Filipinos, has been working with poor families in the Visayas and Mindanao on programs of health, education, values formation and empowerment.

The reason the group has kept a relatively low profile here is that much of its fundraising efforts have been conducted among companies, families and individual donors in the United States and Hong Kong. Another reason, perhaps, is that the work ICM does is channeled through a network of pastors (and some Catholic parish priests) who most likely prefer to keep their work “under the radar.”

But now, Daphne says, the leadership of ICM believes it’s time to tap the business community in the country, who might see in the group’s track record and international credibility an outlet for social responsibility programs that help families and children in most meaningful ways.

ICM’s work is classified into three main programs: “Transform,” which seeks to provide “values, health and livelihood” training among the poorest families in communities; “Jumpstart,” which provides scholarships and even opens preschools for poor children; and “Outreach” for malnourished children through feeding programs. At the same time, ICM also helps individual cases, such as a female burn victim who was treated in the United States for her horrible disfigurement and today dreams of becoming a teacher.

“Filipinos run most of our programs,” clarifies ICM’s new CEO, Dan Owen, who oversees the work of about 600 Filipino personnel. “We are looking for programs that are sustainable, leverageable and replicable,” adds Jovi Zalamea who works with Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong but also serves as executive director of ICM.

What makes ICM operations particularly impressive, for me, is the transparency with which financial transactions are conducted, and the use of business methods, such as the use of surveys, to assess the needs of beneficiaries and impact of programs, in the work of “doing good.”

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Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio “Chito” Tagle was cracking a joke—though it seemed only half-humorously. He was flying to Rome that day, the Manila prelate told the faithful gathered at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd Sisters to mark the centennial of their “presence” in the Philippines. In fact, he added, his luggage was in his car, as he would proceed directly to the airport after the Mass.

“Someone asked me if I shouldn’t have just rested today before my flight,” he confided, “but I said that while I was confident that God would forgive me, I wasn’t too sure if the Good Shepherd sisters would be as understanding.”

Everyone laughed at the archbishop’s dilemma, but there was an undercurrent of understanding, too. Every child who’s gone under the tutelage of Catholic nuns would be all-too familiar with the sisters’ unique blend of stern discipline, guilt-inducing saintliness, and gentle pressure that they apply to get one to do their bidding.

Even so, there was a palpable spirit of celebration that morning, as the RGS (Religious of the Good Shepherd) nuns observed 100 years to the day when two Irish nuns landed in Manila to set up their congregation in the Philippines.

As the story goes, in 1912, the newly appointed bishop of Lipa, Giuseppe Petrelli, desiring to set up a Catholic school for girls in his diocese, wrote his brother, a priest in Rome, requesting him to recommend a congregation of women who could come to the Philippines. At the time, the brother was sending his dirty laundry to a convent of the Good Shepherd sisters who would return his clothes not just clean and ironed but also with every tear mended, every missing button replaced. Impressed, the brother recommended their order to Bishop Petrelli, who worked posthaste to get the RGS sisters to come to the country.

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Since one of Bishop Petrelli’s requests was for English-speaking sisters, English then being the Philippines’ official language under the American colonizers, the RGS superiors chose two Irish nuns based in Burma to make their way by ship to Manila and then by train to Lipa.

These two sisters—Mother Mary Constance Phelan (superior of the Rangoon convent, who left Lipa a few weeks after their arrival) and Sr. Mary Alphonsus Liguori Burke—planted the seeds for what would soon become one of the most dynamic and progressive religious orders for women here.

Paying tribute to St. Bridget, patroness of Ireland, the Good Shepherd sisters established St. Bridget’s Academy in Lipa, and in the intervening years established not just schools, workshops and shelters for girls and women—the order’s particular charism—but also involved themselves in political causes, particularly with political detainees and their families. Today the RGS sisters number in the hundreds, founding 18 “houses” nationwide, apart from their headquarters in Cubao. They are also divided into two ministries: the “active” nuns who move among communities and schools, and the “contemplative” nuns in their convents.

Through the years, I have made many friends among the Good Shepherd sisters. Sr. Christine Tan, the first Filipino superior of the order here, was a memorable early interviewee at the height of martial law. Sr. Soledad Perpiñan and Sr. Pilar Verzosa were dogged workers and crusaders for their special causes. But my biggest personal connection is Sr. Gina Kuizon, who was a fellow employee at the Manila Archdiocesan Media Office, and has since become an unofficial “aunt” to my and my friends’ children, a voice of calm and ironic commentary who lives, for me, the unique spirit and calling of a Good Shepherd sister.