AAA PRESIDENT’S REPORT OLD GIRL’S DAY 2021
DR CLARISSA “CHINKEY” VELAYO
AAA President
Sr. Lerma Pangantihon and all our Assumption Sisters, Dr. Ola Regala and all our teachers and staff, to you my dearest fellow Alumnae, especially the Jubilarians and to all family and friends of the Assumption watching at home here and abroad, fellow Women of Faith and Action…Good morning. I wish you were all here today.
Although I have to hand it to the Silvers of Class 96 this year for doing a fantastic job…
There’s nothing like being with your classmates face to face, physically giving them a hug because you haven’t seen each other for 25 years. There’s nothing like queuing in the long line for Assumption tart and siomai and scrambling for seats in the Mother Rose hall to watch the Velada, nay even standing in the wings for 3 hours waiting for your grandmother, mother, wife, sister or daughter to dance for 3 minutes somewhere at the back of the stage. There’s nothing like that. But of course, this comes real close.
And although it’s a Sunday , so classrooms are closed, in the past year I have had occasion to visit San Lorenzo to go to the AAA office and I make it a habit to walk around the classrooms. You get these mixed emotions seeing them like empty shells. Because really, if not for this pandemic, the students should be here. Because as you and I know there is nothing like experiencing Assumption.
But I want to clarify Assumption is not the campus or the buildings…
WE ALL OF US MAKE UP the ASSUMPTION.
The past two years of being in the “Pandemic Era AAA Board of Trustees”.. was all about finding relevance …when all our activities were shut down. the Bazaar, the Annual Golf Tournament, Old Girls’ Day and the Velada.. the question was how could the AAA still serve the community?
We found other ways, our joint Covid drives with the school and family council, the online art auction, Noche Buena drive and Christmas morning online reflections, our masses and tiny celebrations of life, like for Tita Nini Avancena last April, and other red letter day events like Assumption Day.
More significantly this year, we strove to clean up “our house” financially and because hybrid digital interaction will now forever be a part of the world, we are now continuously striving to update our communication platforms like our website and database; but more importantly, by making meetings like this and the elections online.
And seeing the fantastic turn out of voters this year…which can only mean your interest in keeping our traditions alive, It is a fact that AAA is not the board of Trustees it is YOU OUR MEMBERS.
Our members from Herran and San Lorenzo, our members from the grade school, the high school and the college, and of course our home is always open to all our sister chapters here and around the world. I am truly looking forward to seeing you all “in that sense” come home.
WE ARE…although slowly …joining the rest of the post-vaccination world. For those who haven’t stepped out of their homes, the traffic is back, and more people are venturing out again. But we can’t move on without learning from this ongoing pandemic. For a while everything was quiet. The environment was able to breathe again, families spent more time together, and our homes became our tiny Assumption schools and our churches as well.
If anything, the pandemic reminded me of how fragile we really our and that we need God and all our Assumption values to help us when we step out again.
I know they say the school is only as good as the alumnae they produce… so I am proud to say that in all walks of life…and fields of work.. Assumption girls make that difference. We can help create the Change our society needs the most.
So, until we meet again in the next OGD, as you step out in the coming year, especially for our country with the upcoming elections, this is our call and challenge to share the Assumption that we learned the Assumption that we are in our own communities.
Let them know us by our plaid and blue.
And with that I just want to say that I … and we at the AAA….always look forward to hearing your stories. because we are all a part of the Assumption legacy. HAPPY OLD GIRLS’ DAY!
