The Call for Transformation

It has always been about transformation.

I'm now beginning to fully understand the nature of my new work, and I realized that it's not that far and different from the reason by which I would like to expend my energy with. I've been with the academe for four years before I decided to leave it more than two months ago, and I saw it as a powerful tool by which social and national transformation can be achieved. Now I saw too, in  a clearer perspective, that development work such as ours in the agriculture sector has the same power to push for the necessary transformation. Working in the development sector is lighting a single spark that has the potential to start a conflagration; it has the potential to send ripples of hope and could bring about waves of change to the entire nation.

Not only that development work is heroic; it is also satisfying. I learned that from the people who have invested their talents, skills, education, and literally their entire lives for the transformation of communities and the nation. I have heard their stories of passionate work to improve people's lives; their selfless service and dedication to see progress a reality; their love for their profession which to them is a sacred calling that gives satisfaction beyond the standards of this world. I believe in heroism all the more because of this living heroes who strive to give dignity to their fellow human being.

And I'm grateful to have met them. I'm grateful to be given a chance to work alongside them...besides, working for development of communities and people's lives is a universal calling not only reserved for few individuals but persons with a heart for others.

Although the call for transformation is an idealistic one, it is achievable. It is not a shot in the dark. For social transformation to be possible, there must first be a radical transformation of the individual. Personal transformation is a prerequisite I believe, to national transformation. There must be that revolution within individual consciences and individual values. That should be so, because social transformation transcends the individual. Gandhi said it before: we must be the change we want to see in the world.

The call for national transformation has always been the call for personal transformation.

Me and my new world: working for rural transformation and national rice self-sufficiency. 

The new breed of rice extensionists (AgRiDOC) who will work for the development of rice-farming communities, pose here with Dr. Gelia Castillo, National Scientist in Sociology; and Dr. Rex Navarro, after a day's session at the headquarters of International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, Laguna.