by Mary Irene C. Beloya, Team 3

How about another hundred years?

“…the CWTS teams are here to serve and to motivate the community to dream the impossible”

“Great power comes with great responsibility,” so goes the golden lines of our friendly neighborhood Spiderman on his superhero quests, which had moved lots of new era leaders. Sharing a century of excellence and service, the University of the Philippines is one of those leaders that had constructed an undaunted foundation. As one of the primary backbones of the university’s mission-vision today, the National Service Training Program-Civil Welfare Training Service (NSTP-CWTS) incurred a new saga of a modern day “bayanihan,” a symbol of Filipino unity under one nation umbrella, creating values and changes to everyone. Now, the challenge is to carry out these changes for hundred years to come.

As we students journey with the NSTP-CWTS, we meet life-long pillars along the way that we well share to the community. We transform from every teary eyes’ “HOPELESSNESS” to “HOPEFULNESS.” Squeezing our creative juices to offer a drink of hope, inspires them that in their little ways, they too can do something big. Showing them that we, the CWTS team, are here to serve, motivates them to dream the impossible. Because more than anything else, we are to teach minds, touch hearts, and change lives.

Fortunate are we that the values we give are then folds back to us. As teachers learn more than the students learn from them, so are we too. We get to learn that a well-built service begets a solid rock leadership. Through our interaction with the community, we unlock mysteries of humility and camaraderie. As we serve the community, we experience innovation, formulating ideas and talents we thought we never had. And serving the people is also serving the country, piercing a nationalistic thread in each one of us.

As in every value we share and gain, we start the change we want to see. From as small as a frown into a smile, into big changes as an abandoned building into a daycare center, the extent of change does not matter. It is the inner change that determines if we had succeeded. True, the only constant thing is change and this will be the marked fossils that will make the conversion of NSTP-CWTS into a modern day “bayanihan.”

Now it draws down that the values and the changes we had inscripted in every people’s hearts transformed NSTP-CWTS into a higher strain— a live achievement for than just academics. As a powerhouse, it requires a great responsibility and must always retain being a modern day “bayanihan” excelling not only in the academe but in repaying back the never-failing service the mother country has given to us. The challenge is to continue and not to give up the values and changes planted in every student, touching more hearts, teaching more minds, and changing more lives for a hundred years to come. If we will not move now, then, when? If it is not us, then, who?