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They met when they volunteered for the same city official seeking reelection. Though their candidate failed in his bid, friendship bloomed between the two.Aside from hailing from the same barrio of Lutopan, the youngsters also discovered they shared a willingness to volunteer. Both of their families were active in parish activities. When she was later encouraged by a college mentor to volunteer as a lay companion (laycom) for seminarians at the San Carlos Seminary College, she invited him—a pattern of sharing that naturally culminated in lawyer Donato “Jojo” Villa Jr. taking Josephine “Jo” to be his wife.

Marriage proved that what they had in common was not a result of convenience but of commitment. Though Jojo was starting a career handling labor cases and Jo worked full-time as a guidance coordinator in a state college, the couple continued to volunteer. Aside from laycom work that used up their weekends and after-office hours, Jo volunteered, too, as a counselor for seminarians of the Carmelite Formation Center. Even on weekdays, the couple came home usually near midnight.

When their son Vincent became old enough, the couple brought him along when they were volunteering. On nights that he had to stay home with grandparents, Vincent settled for glazed doughnuts and the promise of an outing.

Heirs of love

If Jojo, Jo and Vincent are tightly knit in sharing kinship with others, Anastacia Tenebro was drawn to volunteerism because of a Belgian pastor’s conviction that workers are not beasts of burden to be exploited by capitalists but “children of God, heirs of heaven.”

Annie’s work as a volunteer spans nearly six decades. Though the former college registrar is mild-mannered, traces of a girlhood passion are pronounced in her narration of how, in the late ’60s, she helped start a local chapter of the Young Christian Workers.

Annie believes that volunteerism operates the same way as the “like to like” apostolate began by Joseph Cardinal Cardijn in his work with Belgian coal mine workers. Cardijn waited for the workers to surface from the mines; befriended them; and guided them in examining their working conditions: were these in harmony with God’s plans for them?

Enlightened workers sought out fellow workers, and worker cells were formed in the bowels of the earth where no light had been expected to penetrate. Cardijn’s methodology of “see-judge-act” seemed so much like the praxis theory of Marx, Cardijn’s contemporary. This leftist association made it difficult but not impossible for Annie and other volunteers to work with unions during Martial Law.

Dream repossessed

The San Carlos Seminary College’s laycom program brought together the crisscrossing paths of Jo, Jojo, Annie and a seminary student named Lorenzo Niñal.

As a high school student in Pinamungajan, Insoy observed how he and his classmates had a hard time learning because of the lack of basic materials. A dream was born then; a dream he sustained as a seminarian reaching out to youths in remote communities.

Insoy quit during the second semester of his third year in philosophy studies. It seemed to be the end of all dreams of priesthood and work with disadvantaged youths. By his account, he went on to lead a life “for me.”

Last September—20 years after he first had his dream—he texted Annie, his lay companion from seminary years. Annie got in touch with Jo and Jojo. In a repeat of Cardijn’s “like to like” apostolate, eight friends banded to form Tsinelas Association Inc.

Hoping to give youths more than a pair of slippers to get through life, the Tsinelas Association consulted the parents and students of Lut-od National High School (LNHS) in the slopes of Pinamungajan. Although the core group agreed to sponsor 10 scholars using their personal funds, “friends of friends” generated more than enough school supplies to provide all 198 students of LNHS, as well as students in other mountain barangays.

Ample evidence that love, after all, makes the world go round.

By Mayette Q. Tabada
Sun.Star Cebu, August 30, 2004