From the mouth of babes

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A streamer marked "Welcome to Tan-awan The FREEMAN Foundation" first squeezed our hearts giving us a hint of the warmth of community partners in barangay Tan-awan, seven kilometers away from Tubigon proper, in the province of Bohol.

The FREEMAN Foundation core group of volunteers set out on a journey aboard MV Tubigon Ferry hours back and were met at the Tubigon port by project partners - siblings Emma, Christina and Ben Marcojos. Emma was with The FREEMAN in the accounting department years back, while Ben serves as current company driver and for TF general manager, Melandro "Sir Boy" Mendoza. Christina is seen from time to time at the office most especially when in choir service on the occasion of First Friday Holy Masses.

In the morning of the other Saturday, onboard a Canter, the six-man core group together with the Marcojoses took the trouble to travel roughly seven kilometers and mostly uphill, through a very bad dirt road to be able to turn over a 25-inch color television set, a Dream satellite and a digital satellite receiver for the realization of the "Dream Satellite Project".

The project was in line with the 20th anniversary in public service of Operation Damayan of the Star Group of Publications. The Dream Satellite Project is seen to benefit 113 pupils of the Tan-awan Elementary School with students coming from barangay Tan-awan, and neighboring barangays Libertad and Cawayanan.

At first glance, I was able to hold back emotions upon the sight of children who walk to school everyday most especially from neighboring barangays (some without even a pair of slippers), are said to be weak in reading comprehension skills according to assessment made by their teachers, two grades sharing a classroom, dilapidated two school buildings, three teachers wherein the school-in-charge Mrs. Anastacia "Ma'm Tasing" Gerigdig also dabbles as class adviser for grades five and six.

But when the program started and the children sang "Lupang Hinirang" as we joined them with fist clenched to chest, my throat went dry and my heart throbbed with this burning pain for the sight of abject poverty.

Then the pupils rendered a choral singing number to Cebu Pop Music winning piece "Kaming Mga Kabataan". I forgot all at once the physical pain of the jiggly ride to Tan-awan aboard the Canter passing by such a god-forsaken barangay Obujan festooned with potholes.

Out of the mouth of babes flowed a song, music that takes on the genre that though has never taken mainstream is always effective in terms of inner healing.

In a "privilege speech" that I was called for to deliver on behalf of the core group, I urged parents to help nurture a generation of sensible community partners in-the-making by supporting the call to make good use of the beneficial tool in mass coaching turned over to the public school.

After the turnover ceremony wherein an emotional Ma'm Tasing expressed "I run out of words to say. I've been in service for 32 years already and I think this will be my last year in the teaching profession, but I've never seen a kind of help like this extended to us", the children rendered a "Thank You" song.

I am always at my weakest link whenever I hear children sing. I am never designed to hold back tears at the sound of music from the mouth of babes. Inside was overwhelming joy for the angelic voices that herald what was, I reckon, a minute help as compared to the vastness of the needs of both pupils and teachers.

Music. It heals a longing to be of help, a wanting to empathize, a yearning to turn stars into coins so the children won't go hungry again or wouldn't be deprived of quality education. It serves as accompaniment to the purpose of life - that we are all made for service.

Music out of the mouth of babes sheds an awakening that after all, there is no such thing as poverty. There can only be shared burden.

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TEXTPRESS URSELF. 3 July 17:30:40 "Gud pm. I read ur column 2d, curious lang ko to hear d kazins perform. Wen wil b der nxt show?"; 3 July 17:42:52 "Hi, nakakita na ko ani nga mga kids performed. Nice & unbelievable gyud cla. Naa cla up coming show?"; 3 July 13:17:47 "Helo there, m currently reading ur artcle n tday's freeman, jst wnt to ask wt or who ur musc nfluences.thanks ; 4 July 10:34:44 "H! Gud pm. Im a studnt of usjr college of nursing. My mother gave me ur #. Cud i ask a question? Wat s d middle nem of the secretary of the department of health, sori 4 d ds2rbnce." Mobile phone numbers withheld.

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