‘Walkers and Runners for Life’

DUMAGUETE CITY – We’re here in this southern city to join the launching of  Foundation University’s (FU’s) “Walkers and Runners for Life”, a program for health and wellness, climate change mitigation, pedestrianization, walkable communities and healthy eating. The program is FU’s main Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative.

What should have been a joyous occasion was marred by the sad news of the sudden demise of our good friend at De La Salle elementary and high school, Atty. Eduardo (Ed) Araullo. Ed was chairman of the human rights group, MABINI, when Rene Saguisag had to go on leave after the latter joined government, and, at the time of his death, corporate secretary and compliance officer of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).

In his lifetime, Ed was a sportsman who excelled in basketball and, much later in life, did a lot of walking and tai chi. Among many of Ed’s admirable qualities was his courage and what one of our classmates, Bobby Ansaldo called, nerves of steel. As an activist both in and out of campus, Ed fought for human rights and democratic causes. He was detained and tortured by Ferdinand Marcos’s military forces but the pain and suffering merely served to inspire him to fight all forms of despotism and repression. 

Months before he died, Ed, on behalf of PCSO, signed the plunder complaint against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and several others. Months earlier, a similar plunder complaint was filed by now senatorial candidate, Riza Hontiveros, and Customs Deputy Commissioner, Gen Danilo Lim, against Arroyo, now a Congresswoman.

Ed is the second De La Salle classmate to have passed peacefully in the last few days, into the gates of our Creator. On Jan. 16, Mariano (Jimmy) Jimenez died after battling lung cancer for several months. We were privileged to have been associated with both Jimmy and Ed early in our lives and in the last few chapters of their lives. So long dear friends! As another classmate, Los Angeles-based Tito Laureola, remarked, the countdown for the last man standing has resumed.

And as people start to make their way to the Lord after having lived life to the fullest, those of us who, by God’s will, are left behind, strive to make the most of what He has given us so that when the day of reckoning comes, we can account for a great part of our life helping improve the condition of others and mankind in general.

One such program which precisely does something substantial and substantive to improve the lives of others is the Japeri project of the Royal and Ancient (R & A), which is perhaps the world’s most influential golf organization that promotes the sport and unifies rules of international play. We had started to discuss the work R&A does in youth development, particularly among the youth-at-risk or the excluded youth in last week’s column.

In 2002, R&A launched a community golf program that uses sport and its values to improve the lives of youngsters in one of Rio de Janeiro’s (Brazil) poorest areas.  The establishment of the program in Japeri is made doubly significant in the light of the reentry of golf in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics.

According to the R&A, its chief executive Peter Dawson visited the project that sits on public land earmarked for housing development. It has become a public golf course that is home to more than 100 young golfers who attend twice-weekly lessons under four R&A-funded coaches.

The R&A News says the project also aims to make a social difference to the children of Japeri. Compulsory attendance at school is a basic requirement of the program, meaning that many children’s academic prospects have been vastly improved.  In exchange for this commitment both on and off the golf course, each child receives a basic food package every month – enough to keep a family going for a couple of weeks. These are program philosophies and features that we hope the R&A can also carry out in the Philippines through the National Golf Association of the Philippines (NGAP) and the latter’s allies, benefactors and supporters.

The program definitely fits the Philippine setting because of the similarity of conditions in the country and Brazil especially with respect to poverty and its impact on children. As Laura Walden of Sports Features.com states, one of the most distinctive parts of golf’s legacy is its humanitarian aspect and a good example of how the game is being used to make a social difference as with the Japeri project.

In an interview with Walden, International Golf Federation (IGF) executive director Antony Scanlon stresses how Rio de Janeiro is adding to IGF’s golf legacy for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Scanlon says that “we had to change the perception that golf is elitist. We had to make it accessible and there is a wonderful social program with the Brazilian Confederation of Golf.” More on Japeri next week.