Another Semester of Practical Lectures With The Agustinians

It was way back 2023 when I set my foot first here inside this campus of Colegio de San Agustin — Bacolod. I'm inexperienced but passionate, that's all I got with me. Amidst the noise from the crowd inside that Auditorium, all I could hear was my heart beating loudly from social anxiety. I was paying attention on my phone more than surveying how many students should we be teaching later after that introduction. If I could wish of something that would have helped me at that moment, I should have wished to go home. However, it was a now-or-never moment of dilemma for me.

"Should I start conquering my fears now or never face it at all?" It's the only thing that I only can ever think of in that state.

And, from there, I followed that whimsical flow of decisions which surprises myself everytime to wherever it would lead me to. I discovered a lot in me wherein I have never knew that I could. From then on, I gradually build up some confidence to do what my passion is telling me. It has been 2 years now and counting since then.

Right now, I'm on this place again with the same mission in mind as we had 2 years ago. Yet, this time we're going to help them build their own school based disaster and risk reduction management unit because that is the new CHED compliance for every colleges and universities, apparently, ordering every schools to have SDRRMU office. It's always an honor to nurture a generation of passionate volunteers.

The school was planning to have a community engagement in the next two weeks. They have asked for help initially at the City's DRRMO but got denied since the office is loaded with tasks for the city due to Panaas Festival and election campaigns of politicians. Due to unavailability of personnel, the City's office delegated the tasked to us instead. We're kinda busy in some way, too, but right now, we have several newbies that could handle the minor tasks in our school events, so then we could go outside for collaboration with other schools.

New phase, new students, new plans.

In summary, those are the things that caught my attention when we entered this place again. The construction of the building at the back entrance was completed, a blessing of a new hall was held on the other side, and there is an ongoing renovations of another building on the opposite side at the same time. As for the plans, I mentioned that already earlier that they're planning to establish their own SDRRMU office because it is now required by CHED.

I've been teaching First Aid here since I was a Rescue Reconnaissance I, Phil. member until I became a senior member of our School's DRRMU. It was years of history and collaboration, and through the efforts of our Head Adviser, STI-WNU and CSAB are still collaborating with BCC. I really hope I could still serve until I can finally graduate in college.

Currently, even though there's a change of plans, the training program flow is still the same. However, it was held on a different building since the auditorium was booked by the Nursing Department for a conference meeting.

On that day, the training was meant for all NSTP students, but on the week after that, we only taught 13 students from different year levels and courses which will become the pioneer members for their office. They will also be the one who will facilitate the community engagement program, so we tried our best to give them a comprehensive and hands-on training that they could use when they are already outside the school. We're often short of time to train them, but I do hope they learned something from it.

Maybe, that might be also the last time that I could still teach during my free time since I'm now working on my finances and focusing on my studies since we are now starting our Capstone Project. Surely, after graduation, I would lose my connections with the schools because I will be a former student of BCC by then. Even so, the future is still uncertain and there are lots of possibilities to consider, but surely, I've imparted few learnings to them that could last for a lifetime. That's what matters the most.

Anyway, this will be the end for this blog. Thank you so much for reading until this far. Have a great day!