News

MHSS partners with Rotaract Club of Manila Metro for relief operation in Pasig

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Continuous monsoon rains in early August had caused massive floodings in numerous areas in the metro. Almost a month after the rains, some of these areas, particularly in Pasig, haven’t recovered yet with residents enduringly wade through murky waters to attend to their daily activities. For this, the Supreme Student Government (SSG) of Malayan High School of Science (MHSS), together with the Rotaract Club of Manila Metro (RAC MM), organized and conducted a relief operation in Pinagbuhatan, Pasig, last September 2.

A total of 155 relief bags containing canned goods, cereal drinks, coffee, food sachets, and rice donated by MHSS students and RAC MM were distributed to the residents of Pinagbuhatan.

“Both parties wanted to give back to the community and share the blessings that they had,” said MHSS English teacher Jan Erwin Macam as the reason for the outreach activity. “We know how hard it is for those people because some members of the MHSS community also suffered from the flooding caused by the habagat.”

Macam, who was the past president of RAC MM and a past district Rotaract representative of Rotary International District 3810, shared that the club was initiating a reach-out campaign when they found out that SSG was also planning to do the same.

“I talked to Ms. Genevieve Hilario, the student council adviser, who also happens to be a member of the same Rotaract Club, and offered the idea of a joint relief operation.”

For two weeks, the SSG and RAC MM together collected and repacked the goods donated by the students and the club. The two groups chose Pinagbuhatan as the place to distribute the relief goods, as it has been one of the places that were badly affected.

Arriving at the barangay, the team felt for the residents as they tried to live their lives in the midst of a calamity.

“Those people need all the help they can get because they are already suffering from the floods that reached their homes,” said Melissa Quing, SSG secretary. “They are having difficulty in providing for their everyday needs, so the opportunity that we had to help them just made us really glad.”

The team was just the second batch of volunteers that came with relief goods to the barangay, and the residents were very thankful for the help extended to them.

“As we handed out the bags, we couldn’t help but notice their smiles. It was priceless,” shared Quing.

For her, being of service to other people, especially to those who are in need, has rewards that she will always treasure.

“Bringing joy and happiness to them was worth all the sweat. In turn, you also experience happiness in helping people. Receiving heart-warming ‘thank you’s’ can never be compared to anything.”

Macam, together with the rest of the MHSS administration and faculty, expressed his admiration for the students’ spirit of volunteerism and their eagerness to uphold the school’s core value of Responsibility.

“We are very happy to see that our students are aware of what is happening outside the walls of our campus. They know that they can do something. It was, after all, their initiative, and we were just here to supervise it. They wanted to be involved, and they knew they could make a change.”

Although it’s its first time to organize a disaster response relief operation, MHSS has been doing outreach activities in the past at Justo Lukban Elementary School and at daycare centers in different barangays in Manila.