Efren Penaflorida: In Service Comes Light



EFREN PENAFLORIDA? NEVER HEARD OF HIM...
          Well, you should because he is that personality who was the ONLY Filipino to ever to be nominated and to win the CNN “Hero of the Year” award, which he received in 2009. Efren Geronimo Penaflorida Jr. (born March 5, 1981) is a teacher and social worker in the Philippines. He is the founder and head of the Dynamic Teen Company, which gives Filipino youth an opportunity to have an alternative to street gangs through education, having school settings such as cemeteries and trash dumps with his Karton Klasrum.



THE LIFE OF SERVICE
            Efren Penaflorida was born the middle child of Efren Peñaflorida Sr., a tricycle driver, and a housewife, Lucila Geronimo. Their family later started a small noodle business to earn more money. Efren grew up in an urban slum near an open dump site in Cavite City, Cavite, having to play with garbage and swimming in polluted waters. He would often get bullied there. Penaflorida was one of World Vision's sponsored children during his early childhood.

Penaflorida completed his elementary and high school education through the help of scholarships and financial help, and received several class awards and honors. In 2000, he graduated from San Sebastian College–Recoletos de Cavite with a degree in computer technology, receiving highest honors. He pursued a second course at Cavite State University Cavite City campus, graduating cum laude in 2006 with a degree in Secondary Education.



            In 1997, when he was sixteen years old, he started a youth group in his high school aimed at diverting students attention away from street gangs, and towards community activism and personal development. Joined by other classmates, they named the group "Dynamic Teen Company". The Dynamic Teen Company started as a friendship club with about twenty members, with an aim of providing youth awareness projects, talent and self-development activities, and community services. They partnered with Club 8586, another community service organization working in the area. They later thought the idea of the "pushcart classroom", wherein pushcarts were stocked with school materials such as books, pens, tables, and chairs, and then used on Saturdays to recreate school settings in unconventional locations such as the cemetery or trash dump.



           Penaflorida was nominated for CNN Heroes by Club 8586, the youth group that financed his elementary and high school education. After looking through 9,000 nominees from over 100 countries, CNN's Blue Ribbon Panel selected Penaflorida as one of its 28 heroes of 2009. On October 1, Penaflorida was named as one of the ten finalists.. He has actually gotten two achievements that no Filipino have reached before, which is to be the first Filipino to be nominated for the CNN “Hero of the Year” award of 2009 on November 22, and the first Filipino to ever win it. Peñaflorida received $100,000, which will be used to fund his work in the Dynamic Teen Company. Then, upon his return to the Philippines,President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo conferred on Penaflorida the Order of Lakandula in a ceremony at Malacañang Palace.



IS HE LIKE JOSE RIZAL?

          In some ways he is like Rizal. In the general way, he has a heart to those who are placed under others' social class. Jose Rizal lit up the hearts of us Filipinos, by showing us how we were placed in a lower class than the Spaniards and the hardships we received from that, but he helped us to get out of it. Penaflorida did the same thing in the context of helping street children get out of the choice of staying uneducated and sometimes s being led to street gangs, through his own way of using the pushcart classrooms, to give them an education and to find out that street gangs aren't their only choice. Through the education he gave them, they realized that they will be able to find alternative futures. Rizal and Penaflorida both helped people realize their calling, which is for Rizal and the Filipinos, to unite against the Spaniards, and for Penaflorida and the street children, find an alternative future other than street gangs and begging on he streets.

  

WHY HIM?

          Why not him? In contributing to our country, there are two points that can be said, which is his honor that popularized the Philippines and his influential contribution on hard work and simplicity. 

In looking at the pictures, you noticed his pushcart filled with books, and him pushing that should-be-heavy pushcart. His hard work has brought honor to the Philippines through the award which makes him an example of a man for others which people should look up to.



          We also notice he himself in the pictures, nothing too extravagant  can be seen. Can you see him using a car for his heavy push cart? Do you see him having others to teach for him and to push the cart for him? I don’t think so. This shows simplicity. Through simplicity, big effects, may still happen. It is because of his simple idea and acts that the children on the slums receive education to find an alternative from street gangs.



          A role model and a contributor to the service of the Philippines and its honor. Efren Penaflorida truly deserves to be a modern day hero.